Went to Interlachen today to do an inspection with my father-in-law. One of his hives was thin on bees and apparently queenless or at least without a laying queen. On the way back to the house he spotted a swarm on a nearby tree (explaining the state of the hive). So we decided to capture the swarm... John bravely climbed an extension ladder with a sawzall to cut the branch that was hosting the swarm. After shaking the swarm into a nuc box with 5 frames my wife noticed there was still a good sized clump of bees that had reformed on a tree branch. So John went up the ladder again. After another shake we were pretty sure we had the queen in the box. So we relocated the box back over near the parent box ( perhaps this was a mistake).
After cooling off we went back out to check on the captured swarm. They were nowhere to be found and the nuc box was empty. There was a pretty good clump or beard of bees under the parent hive, but not enough to account for the swarm. We searched the trees nearby for awhile looking for our missing bees with no success.
So what started as a very exciting and self-congratulatory atmosphere turned to frustration and disappointment. Oh well.
