I got home and ate lunch. When I had gotten the call I was fasting and it was almost lunch time. After two hours of frantic beekeeping I was very hungry.
After lunch I cut down a board to block the entrience. When you install a swarm you need to block them in for the first day or two because the bees still have the mentality to swarm. If you don't block them in they are likely to take off again. I then spent some time fighting with my smoker. That thing is very cool in theory, but in practice it leaves something to be disired. Finally, it was time to get the bees in their new home.
I had seen Mike shake bees into a new hive once before. His method involved two violent bangs of the box. The first band on the bottom corner of the box to shake all the bees off the sides and lid of the box. Then whip the lid of box off, flip it over and bang the open end over the open hive. Unfortunately, this exact method would not work for me cause I had a shoe box inside my xerox box. I did my best to replicate the first two shakes. Then I had to pick up the shoe box in a cloud of bees and try my best to repeat the same process. However, with the shoe box the lid was attached so the whipping was not as easy. The bees were much calmer for this part than they had been for the collection. Therefore they put up with my antics.
By the time I had gotten all that done my smoker had gone out. I went ad got some more cloth to burn and this time just lit it like a torch and blew it on the bees. This was about when Moe showed up. I put her in charge of smoking. I have seen beekeepers that just smoke cigarettes when beekeeping. I started trying to get the feeder on the hive and close them in.
We left the entrance unblocked for a few minutes so a few more bees could get in. Then I sealed them up and walked away.
I had a superman costume to finish and after an afternoon of rescuing all these beautiful ladies I felt the part.
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