Swarm

Alas, we had a swarm this morning just after 9 a.m. I phoned the Junior Beekeeper, but he was marching in the Lynden Canada Day parade this morning, and nobody was home. And, I cobbled together a hive from two shallow honey supers and a couple of tarpaulins, etc. and placed it on the bee cart and trundled this under the ball of bees, but this was too high in a spruce tree to knock down into the hive, and on too small a branch to support a ladder, and too awkward a place to saw down the branch with the extension saw. So I placed some lovely comb and honey sprinkled on a plate at the hive-front to create scent, and when I came back at noon, they were just preparing to leave for wherever their scout had determined they'd go. Good bye, bees! Farewell! It's late for a swarm, and first year bees are usually too busy raising comb and so on, to swarm, but...