I have in my yard right now, 8 boxes (nuc size) of bees I have caught as either swarms or splits for different reasons in the last 4 weeks. In this group there is a swarm that moved into one of my “to clean” boxes. It is a honey super. I had to change the box which means that I had to take the frames out of the dilapidated box and place them in a better box. It was a shallow super and all I had was a medium. When the bees get settled and start to really set up housekeeping, they will put comb on the bottom bar of the shallow frames to fill up the rest of the space down to the bottom board with just the bee space below that. I will have a honey super on top so they will have some place to put their Winter honey.

In the Spring I will place a brood box on top so the queen will start laying in the brood box after the two honey supers have been filled up with babies. When I see that she is laying in the brood box, I will then put it on the bottom board and place a queen excluder (QX) on that and then put the two honey supers with brood on top.

I will put a stick under the first super between the super and the QX. As the full grown bees emerge the cells to begin their work, they can pass through the QX, but the drones cannot. That is what the propped up super is for. When all the bees are hatched, the workers will put nectar in the brood cells and when all the cells are capped, then I will remove the QX.

As a rule, the queen will not cross capped honey. It will act as a QX and there will be no honey excluder to impede the bees from the honey comb. Some beekeepers will not use a QX because their thinking is “the bees just will not make as much honey when a QX is there to slow the progress of the worker bees.

Today, I asked a new beekeeper to go with me to hive a swarm that was on the steps of a funeral home right at the entrance that the public uses. There was to be a funeral at 4:00 this afternoon. This swarm was BIG according to the Funeral Director. In truth, there was maybe 1/2 to 3/4 of a pound of bee therein this swarm. However, one of the employees is allergic to bees, so that was reason enough to go and get them. I will probably combine them with the split that I got from the Observation Hive that I mentioned earlier. I just will have enough time to get them settled into a deep brood box by November and by feeding them, I think that I can have a new working colony by Spring.

Any swarm from now on this year, will be iffy to a no go. A jingle to help you remember: “A swarm in May is worth a bale of hay. A swarm in June is worth a silver spoon. A swarm in July ain’t worth a fly.” Unless the swarm is a Huge 3-5 lbs, I wouldn’t even try to capture it unless there is an emergency such as: “allergic to bees”, or they are on playground equipment. You could be throwing your money and time away for a “just might be a Winter survivor”. That will be your call.

I now have to get ready to help a beekeeper pull his honey and extract for him so you just keep on reading and thinking what you need to do in the next few months to be ready for Winter. As Kim Flottum says, “Take care of the bees (Fall) that take care of the bees (Winter) that will be collecting your honey in the Spring.”