I am thankful for my rural living. I don’t have to be concerned about my bees swarming and bivouacking in my neighbor’s back yard. However, I do want them to stay in the hive and produce a good honey crop. Keeping bees from swarming is a lot of work. And if you’ve given your bees their best chance at creating a strong vibrant hive, then they are more likely to swarm. All my hives are very strong this year. I only reversed one hive since the queen was fully engaged in both hive bodies in all but 1 colony. All my hives swarmed last year so I have young queens. My 9 hives are all I want. I also don’t want to sell bees. So, I’m not going to make splits. Some sources say that increasing ventilation by opening the screened bottom board a little helps, so I do that. My strategy has been to try to get them to June without swarming, but this year that may be a big problem. My first swarm was April 27. I put it on the swarm list and Nate came out and gave it a new home. I had hung a Russian Scion on a tree on the east side of the apiary but they unfortunately went west into the blackberries. I went through the swarm hive and made a small nuc with several queen cells, then removed all but 2 cells in the donor. My plan is to check each hive for swarm cells weekly. If I find queen cells and they haven’t swarmed, I’ll make a nuc with the cells and destroy the rest, then replace the frames with drawn comb. If they’ve swarmed then I’ll eliminate all but 2 cells. You absolutely want to avoid after swarms which can really deplete a colony population. Checking these boxes is also hard work. I put the 2nd super on most of them and the first were running close to 30 pounds. That’s a lot of unstacking and restacking as my back frequently lets me know. As for the nucs, I’m going to be ok with a having a few around for any fall problems or even next spring if they can overwinter.

Tanging
Is tanging a bit of beekeeping mythology or does it work? The theory is that a beekeeper banging on pots and pans or other suitably noisy instruments can persuade a swarm to settle quickly and be re-hived instead of watching it fly off into yonder wilderness. Tanging has been around hundreds of years if not thousands to a time when beekeepers routinely promoted swarming to offset killing half their colonies every year at harvest time. One dismissive tanging account I read said that if a swarm landed on somebodies property then it was theirs unless a beekeeper was chasing it while banging metal together thereby signaling it was theirs. Folks begin to think the banging was for the swarm’s benefit and not the beekeeper’s finders’ keepers. I don’t accept that idea since tanging appears to be around for a lot longer than property rights, and why should chasing and banging convey ownership? Therefore, I do believe in the idea of tanging to bring a swarm down. There are theories why honey bees would halt their escape and put their plans on hold. For instance, a specific frequency in the banging disturbs them, or that it mimics the sound of thunder and encourages them to take cover. What ever the reason, there are a many who swear it works and keep a suitable pot, pan, trash can lid, and something to hit them with sitting in a handy place in the apiary.
There are three times you could try it. First, as the bees are emerging from the hive and taking to air. Second, when they are bivouacked on a branch. And thirdly when they take flight for a distant cavity. Evidence for the first case is many, and I think that since the bees are planning on settling down anyway, I could see quite a few eureka moments. If you live in an urban setting and getting your bees to stop after 25 feet rather than 150 feet could be quite advantageous. I say bang away. Case 2 when a swarm is 30 feet up a tree and. tangers try to coax them down to the ground where a box is all set up. That would be genuinely nice indeed. Many claim to have done just that with tanging so you have nothing to lose but your neighbors respect. Now the final case is where scouts have located a new home and are rousing the resting swarm to flight. This might take all the tang banging you can muster to get them to stop and re-rest or come down to you. This case is also the only one that I have seen actual published research. Michael L Smith in the December 2013 issue of IBRA’s Journal of Apicultural Research trashed the notion in a small study of swarms. He says tanging has no effect. But he only tried it on 4 swarms and those were all cases of leaving the bivouac. He did chase them across roads, community gardens, and farmland while banging a metal spoon on a frying pan until he could no longer see them. He was 0 for 4. That’s not a large sample but I would have expected better results if tanging does work for outward bound bees.
I’ve got an old cow bell somewhere. I’ll have to find it and hang it from a nail in the bee yard. Could be fun, it’s why I have bees.

Queen’s Throne
I made a queen’s throne this past winter from plans I got off our May guest speaker Dw Schoenthal’s facebook site blue green horizons. The swarm at right was on a redwood branch about 20 feet up. This is the only tool I had to reach them. So with my 24’ pole I set up at about 5 pm. It was a very large swarm spread across 4 feet of limb with 2 pendulus orbs. After about 45 minutes I lowered it and there was a solid mass of bees inside on the frames and they were fanning heavily. But there were still tons of bees on the branch. So I put the lid on the thing, removed a small screened vent so bees could use it as an entrance and sent it back up. Progress was slow as bees would march in and march out. It was going to take hours if it works. I decided to leave it up all night and check in the morning. Maybe I can Tang them in. Ugh, next morning all the bees are outside the throne. I don’t think the lid was a good idea. They were back on the limb except for a group that had attached to the side of the throne. So I very slowly lowered them and removed the throne and let the bees fall into a regular 5 gallon bucket, and then poured them into the throne. They seemed to like the change of scenery and even those bees who spilled onto the grass began marching to the side entrance hole. Progress? I ran the bucket up the pole a few times to dislodge some of the swarm and then poured them into the throne. They also stayed. Final step for the day was to extend the pole and throne back up to the main body of branch bees sans lid. It is 3:00 drizzling out and 55 degrees. When I return tomorrow: Will they throne or will they roam? Since it is press time for this newsletter I am sorry to say you will be left with a cliff hangar until next time. Bill