Really?

Erin Forbes, master bee-keeper from Portland, Maine, tongue-in-cheek declared may 17th to be the official opening day for swarm season here. well, she wasn't far off at all. on wednesday, may 15th at 11:00a.m., Jamaica swarmed and all of a sudden, our backyard was full of bees in the air. since we had seen some indication of swarming on our last inspection, we had decided to pull Jamaica from the hive and do an artificial swarm at the beginning of the week, however, the weather was very cool and windy and Lawrence didn't like the idea of exposing the brood.  of course, with the first halfway-decent weather on wednesday morning, she was "outta there".  the swarm landed in one of our hemlock trees in the backyard and after lots of discussion, we ended up topping the tree and shaking the clump into the waiting, baited hive.  the operation seemed successful, since everyone stayed in there. the moment we were done we went up to the nursery and performed a preemptive maneuver, removing Rosie from her hive to begin the artificial swarm process, although her hive wasn't nearly as ready to swarm, as Jamaica's had been. the following day, Peggy and Lawrence went through Jamaica's old hive and found 20 (yes!) queen cells in various stages of development. they removed four for our two nucs and left two really lovely ones in the hive and culled the rest. with that the swarm episode concluded and now our backyard apiary looks like this -

plus we have two more at the nursery. never a dull moment with bees.