It’s the humidity. And also bee swarms that emerge from a brand new package installation because there was a queen in the bees the provider shook into the box in addition to the (marked) queen they put in the cage. What’s the big deal, you ask?

Like the Highlander, there can be only one. Either the bees, happy with the original, unmarked queen will free the marked queen and then kill her, or they will free her and the other queen will take a bunch of bees with her and swarm out.

The latter is what happened today: a very humid, extended round of wrangling to get that swarm out of a tree branch about 10-12 feet off the ground. In the end, I wound up simply lopping the branch as trying to shake them from that height was not working after a couple of tries. After cutting the branch and setting it on the hive I’d set up, I left them for a bit, to calm down and get themselves sorted. There were a handful of bees flying around where the branch had been, looking for their landing site.

I gave them about ten minutes or so, went back out, and managed to find the queen in the box. Hooray! Now, the question is: will they stay? That question is unlikely to be answered today, as it’s overcast and we’re on our way toward dusk. The other question, which also will not be answered today because the couple hours spent working on that swarm in our humidity sapped me of everything I had left in the tank – no lunch in that tank, either – is to determine where the original marked and caged queen is in the hive from which that swarm emerged. Both questions can and by necessity will have to wait until the morning.

Thinking of keeping bees? Think on it deliberately, and don’t make an instant decision. It isn’t for everyone.