Crunchy Beekeeping Lives Again

Well, we get to start over!!  I thought I was going to be done after last year when I lost the hive to wax moths.  It was a huge mess, but now I get to start over!


God blessed us with a wild colony of bees that is easily enough to set up 3 boxes.  Heather from Heather's Blooming Gardens on Facebook, and I collected a wild swarm from somebody's back yard.  While we were pulling out the brood comb to put in our boxes, a queen hatched from her cell in front of us!!  SOOOOO NEAT!!

This colony was inside a discarded conveyor belt that had buckled and bent, creating a "bent pyramid" kind of shape.  

So, anyway, we got the swarm collected and over to her house to kinda divy it up, and a mass of bees collected around a limb of one of her trees.  We tried shaking them off, but they went right back!  It's almost like they were trying to swarm right then.  I have a second hive I'm going to offer them to see if they will take it up.

Anyway, here are some pics from the capture....