Pretty awesome! I have never been around that many bees at a time. The roar of them was crazy, and it was so cool to be able to walk into the swarm and have them flying around me.
The plan was to give them a couple days to get established, and pick them up on Monday or Tuesday. When I talked to Essie on Saturday afternoon, though, she said there are "some bees" still clustered on the outside. That's odd... So the plan changed - I would go over to Essie's Saturday night, shake the clustering bees into a bucket, bring the trap and the extra bees home and put them in a hive. Easy peasy!
Well... not so easy. When I got to Essie's a found this:
That's a whole lot of bees! I climbed the ladder, brought down the trap and tried to shake the bees into a trashcan. When I tried, though, I found that they had started to build comb on the outside of the box! So I jammed the box down into the can, wrapped a sheet around it with a bungee cord, and put it in the car. I drove it home, parked the car with the windows cracked, and went to bed.
In the morning, I took a look at the car and saw bees flying in and out. Apparently there was a hole in the bottom of the trashcan and they got out! I put my suit on and drive the car to the back, by the beehives. A beekeeper friend with lots of swarm experience came over to help. He sprayed the inside of the can with sugar water, gave it a good bump, and most of the bees fell into the can. He then dumped this can into the new hive. We did this a couple more times with the can, the swarm trap and the sheet. Quickly, the bees in my car came out and went onto the hive.
Now the swarm from Essie's is snug at home in their new, natural wood colored hive, and I have my "final" number of hives at my home, the South apiary.
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