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Yesterday I did a little maintenance around my hive areas, weed eating etc.
I've got a swarm living in one of my traps and I'll plan to move them tomorrow and get a trap right back up in that spot. So far, using a hunting ladder stand has been my most effective location for swarm traps. 10-12' up seems to be the sweet spot for my success, though I have caught them in lower tree forks etc.
One of my splits is defnitely queenless and I think 2 are probably not going to make it without significant intervention. Not sure what I'm going to do, but I'll probably just let them go at this point and focus on replacing them with swarms.
I'm not sure if it's the weather or something else, but in general I've got more aggressive bees this year. 2 hives I'd call mean, but even on a nice day yesterday at my second yard I had bees bouncing off of my facemask the entire time I was there. I'm sure some would tell me to do a mite check and see if that's why they're grumpy, or if I need to kill and replace a couple of queens. Unfortunately, I haven't found many queen cells and there haven't been any available to buy in a reasonable drive.
That said, white clover is blooming and I've started adding the honey supers(boxes for collecting honey that I keep). I've got a couple of boxes put together with comb foundation and I'll add those this weekend.
I did make a new tool to help capture swarms that are clustered higher locations. I bought a 23' telescoping painters pole. I obtained a clear plastic water jug and mounted it on the pole. Now, If I get calls for those swarms higher than I can reach, I can extend this pole, and hopefully knock the cluster into the jug and bring them down to the hive box without dumping 20,000 bees on my head. I'll try to get a video to share when I get a chance to try this out.
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