Captured my first swarm of the season. Sorry no pictures. When I drove into the apiary all was quiet. About 5 minutes later the bee roar started. Over a period of several minutes a swarm issued from a hive and alit in a close by tree branch about 8 feet high. I scurried around to get the necessary equipment. Then I backed the pickup underneath the swarm and stood on the tailgate with a cardboard box. Shaking the branch resulted in a cascade of bees into the box. They were immediately transferred to a spare hive. As of 2 hours later they were still in the hive. I put on a hive top feeder with 2 gallons of 1:1 syrup to keep them contented and to encourage drawing out of comb. It looked to be about 5 pounds of bees. Its always nice to recover about $130 worth of free bees!
The swarm came out at about 1PM, when the temperature got up to about 65F. The next four days will be in high 70's to low 80's and everyone should be on the lookout for swarms from strong overwintered colonies.
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