05/28/2026
Good News... Bad News... Good News
(Things Aren't Always as They Seem)
I was contacted by some friends who discovered a large bee colony on their front porch. It looked, at first glance, like a straightforward swarm recovery: dump them into a box and go home. But then I dumped the first load of bees and found 4 sheets of comb at the core of their cluster.
"Okay, so the swarm chose to take up residence", I thought. But as I got the bees cleared from the corner, I saw several running into a gap at the corner. Also, the comb had some nectar and pollen, but no brood (eggs). Is this only part of a larger hive inside the structure, and is the queen inside?
The bees were lackluster about going to the box, even after most of the colony had been swept inside, so I was pretty sure the queen wasn't in there. Resigning myself to coming back to make a plan for a more involved removal, I packed up my gear. On my last trip to collect my things from the porch, I noticed some bee activity in the landscaping against the house, to the side of the porch. I quickly went to inspect (forgetting to take a photo in the moment), and I found and caged the queen where she had apparently fallen.
Now the simple swarm catch that had become a removal was a swarm collection again. The queen (in her cage) was placed in the bait hive box, and the bees suddenly showed more interest in it as their home. I left the bait hive there to give stragglers and foragers time to return, and I'll retrieve the box after dusk.
