Swarm & Move In 4/14/22

[Jacobs]

I picked up (vacuumed) a 5-6 pound swarm about a block from my house yesterday morning. They were not happy bees. They had been in a bush long enough to build a few square inches of comb and put pollen in 1 cell. My guess is that the dwindling honey supply and yesterday's unstable atmosphere made them feisty. While I was at lunch with friends, David texted me about activity that looked like swarming at my driveway pad. Bees were moving into equipment that had been heavily scouted for the last 4 days. This was not an official bait hive. It was a stack of mediums on a landing board with an outer cover on top. I have been slow to clean up the frames in the boxes. Despite this set up facing north--despite the opening being at ground level--bees moved in. Given what I have seen with these 2 sets of bees, I can only conclude that good housing for bees near me must be hard to come by.