Jack Wohlfarth's apiary on Sunday March 1, 2009 with a little bit of snow.

I

Dick Brickner found this piece of freshly built drone comb on top of the frames and loaded with larva.

The above two pictures were submitted April 20 by Donald Manthei who said two swarms have been in a tree off of Baptist Church Road for the last four days.  

Jason Dodson retrieves a swarm from a fence row.

If it were only this easy every time.

A Mid-Summer Bee Extraction  August 15, 2009

A landowner whose right of way to his farm had this hackberry tree blow over (but still growing) requested help on removing a bee cluster in the tree.  The bees are clumped around a 1" diameter hole on top side about one third of the distance from the base of the tree.  A 5" to 6" hollow core ran all the way down to the ground, but was plugged with a mouse nest at the bottom, so the bees only had one entrance, exit.  After cutting the tree down and removing the comb, the queen ran out the bottom onto the ground with a lot of other bees and was successfully escorted into the awaiting hive.  This was an old hive because all of the comb was extremely dark.  There was also very little honey in the hive, although there were a lot of bees.  The tree was located in the middle of the McFall sod farm, so the fields on both sides are virturally free of clover and wild flowers, so nectar and pollen sources were not immediately available.