We had an extra bit of excitement Monday morning. My phone rang at work and there was a gentleman on the other end with a problem: a swarm of bees had moved into a tree in his backyard on Saturday and he’d really like them to leave. No problem, says I.

After consulting with Greg, we decided to go right away rather than waiting: two days is a long time for a swarm to hang out without finding a new home and we didn’t want to lose them.

It turns out that the lady of the house was in the kitchen and heard the swarm arrive. She looked out the window to see literally thousands of bees buzzing around an ornamental tree in the back yard. Eventually, they all collected together on one branch about 10′ off the ground.

The gentleman initially thought they were hornets and was going to go guy some insecticide when a neighbour set him straight and told him to “leave them alone”. After a suggestion from his daughter that he try to find a beekeeper that would remove them, he eventually found us.

We arrived to find a cluster of bees, about 25cm tall and 15cm across, hanging from an upper branch and quite accessible. So, Greg climbed the ladder and trimmed branches around the swarm until he could hold a box underneath them. Then, I used a pole-pruner to cut the branch and drop the whole works into the box.

As soon as it was settled on the ground, the bees starting fanning around the entrance and marching right in. The queen is in the house! We left it underneath the tree until the early evening to allow for as many of the scouts and other workers to make it into the box. There wound up being only a dozen or so flying about when we taped it up.

So, where to take them? Aha! How about one of the two empty hives in Lansdowne? The two packages that were supposed to be there decided to abscond, so we just happened to have a home ready.

Well, most of them absconded. There were still 100 or so pretty lethargic ladies hanging about. Hopefully, they’ll get along with their 10,000 new friends.

Long story short: Greg moved (dumped) them into the hive and then gave them a good sugar dusting to help with any mites they might (ha!) have, then we closed it all up and headed home. We’ll leave them alone for a couple of weeks then head out for a peek.