The Wayward Swarm, Part 4 (284)

WEBVTT

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Hey listeners, it's Thursday again.

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Jason's here with me, and I promise you.

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That this is the last time we're going to talk about this goofball swarm that was hived by a couple of goofball beekeepers.

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Jason say hi to everybody.

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Hi everybody.

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I'm doing the walk bike.

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You know the drill.

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It's really a nice day.

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It's been

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Raining a lot and it's still cool.

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Wooster didn't really have a warm spring this time.

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We're gonna see if we can decide what to do with this and give you the end end story

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The last version of what went on.

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Listeners, I'm Jim Tew here at Honey Bee Obscura.

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I come to you once a week with some kind of talk on some plain talk beacon.

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Keeping issue.

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Welcome to Honey Bee Obscura, brought to you by Growing Planet Media, the producers of the Beekeeping Today podcast.

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Join Jim Tew, your guide.

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Through the complexities, the beauty, the fun, and the challenges of managing honey bees.

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Jim hosts fun and interesting guests who take a deep dive into the intricate world of honey bees.

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Whether you're a seasoned beekeeper,

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are just getting started.

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Get ready for some plain talk that'll delve into all things honey bees.

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Those bees, that swarm, and we're walking through the little barn shed.

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That swarm is so beaten up.

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Until we didn't bother it.

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And we we honestly have not opened it, listeners.

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I've we tried to tell you.

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I may give a review here in a bit for those of you who just have only heard this issue.

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We've never opened it.

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And it looks to be big enough to require a smoker.

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What do you think, Jason?

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Yeah.

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I hate to go with no smoke and then find out we gotta have smoke and be recording all of this.

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We look goofy enough already

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Yeah, the activity is nice.

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A lot more activity today than last time I was out here

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Yeah, but it was really ugly the last time.

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If if this if there's if this is a successful hive, then this will be the most difficult

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most difficult swarm hiving that I've ever done.

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Jason just walked over to the scene of the crime.

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Nothing's left there.

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They're all gone.

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Listeners, to those of you who may be new to this saga, uh I I had health reasons in my family that really precluded me doing any

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work, they were serious issues with my bees, so they had to go their own way.

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And I thought they were going to die.

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I bought packages last spring.

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Sorry about the airplane.

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And my bees didn't die.

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And they were actually powerful.

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I knew swarming was going to be an issue, so I went from having not enough bees to worried about having too many bees.

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And that's where the swarm issue comes in.

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So if you're wondering why these swarms were strange, that's the reason for it.

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I think we're gonna shut down the microphones and light the smoker.

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I don't think I'll put you through all of that.

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So let's turn them off, Jason, and we'll be right back as soon as we have a smoker going

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Alright, I got a smoker going.

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You people are a clever, clever bunch.

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Why don't some of you come up with something that I can do

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Without smelling like I've been to a barbecue.

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Alright, here goes nothing.

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Oh, there's the

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There's the slatted rack I put on.

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I put an empty deep on top of a slatted rack because every time we opened it up to shake the bees out of the trap package they would come roaring out

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So I put the trap packages, the last few on upside down

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It's gonna be hard to get this out of this stuff's really propolized in.

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Yeah.

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What started all this was that I was going to go over to one of the big box stores and look at

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Look at getting a cutter, reciprocating cutter

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That will let me get these stuck out pieces out.

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Is it possible to overextend a hive tool?

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Do you have another hive tool in the shed?

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I can this one right there in the bucket.

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Okay.

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Listener at some other time

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We're going to have a lecture on Oh my heavens Jason she honestly is here no way I don't see her but

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There's eggs.

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Excellent.

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So here take the frame and look.

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You know, listeners, here's the truth

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Jason and I talked and we thought after we made these poor people listen to this many of these episodes, did we just want to tell them that she was this queen right?

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And we had a a conscience of

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modeled confusion there for a while and we decided that we had never lied to you before and we weren't going to start today.

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She's got brood everywhere.

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She made it.

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She made the trip.

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I'm not kidding.

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Nothing's capped.

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She's got eggs and she's got three or four day old larvae.

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That queen survived the trip down the tube.

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Jason, that's all I want to say.

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Yep.

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I don't have any intent to find her or see her.

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These bees have really been through a hard place.

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I got a bee trying to see

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sting my microphone.

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Let me get her off in case she's making it hard to hear all the important stuff I'm saying.

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Putting the frames back in

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I told you this colony hadn't been opened in several years, so it's really propolized up.

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And but I got it back in.

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And here's the odd thing, since I don't have an inner cover

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I'm gonna put the sliding right back on.

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Okay, listeners, it's really a success story

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Even though we lost probably a pound to a pound and a half of the bees, there's there's bees now in two deeps.

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He's already in the upper deep.

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And everything looks really good.

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Swatting a smoker is such a pain.

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I don't know how to know how to leave it.

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I don't know how to leave it.

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Tonight when I'm dozing off, I'll be having pleasant thoughts

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To review you, I watched the swarm leave.

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They went up about 14 feet in the tree.

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I thought I'm too old.

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I'm not gonna get on a ladder.

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I couldn't resist it.

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I got on a ladder.

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I had a modest fall off the ladder.

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I reminded myself I'm not a young man, I live alone now.

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So don't be taking chances.

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I rushed out after a while and I did get a ladder and you know and tried to do it.

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I gave up so that I watched them and the weather turned cold and rainy, really cold, you know, almost in the 30s.

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So those bees made a horrible decision to leave.

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And they had to hang there.

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I knew they took enough food for about three days.

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And on the fifth day I knew they were in trouble, and that's when Jason the hero said he would climb the ladder for me

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Hero is one word for it.

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Yeah, hero is one word for it, but that's the word I chose to use, Jason.

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And Jason got up and vacuumed it down.

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Then we got too many bees in the trap cage and I thought we'd killed them again

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But we got them poured out.

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They accepted my high bodies immediately.

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We never saw the queen.

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We didn't see her today.

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I didn't look for her.

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I just saw plenty of brood

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on two frames.

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So she's in there, the swarm is down, the story is over, and it's a beautiful three or four segment issue on how not to hive a swarm

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If it was not enough already, they kept swarming.

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And I didn't have the equipment.

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And these other swarms appeared to be mating swarms.

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So what I what I did was I just took any old comb that I could find

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It's not impressive.

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I've told you that this is this is my development of slip shod beekeeping.

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So these bees are going to be stuck

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On the cover.

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Yes, they are.

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Yep.

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We knew that was going to happen, and I was going to see with without breaking off

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the one comb they'd got up to see if they have a queen in there.

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I can't tell and the comb is breaking off and I don't want that to happen

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Someone put it back.

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It's a small swarm.

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I think it was a mating swarm.

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And it may very well be queenless

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But I picked it up.

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I didn't want it.

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Should I dare say this to the listeners?

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But I didn't want any more bees

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I'm just doing this for a good time.

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I didn't mean to work.

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Jason, you leave in a hive tool here.

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Minus five.

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So there's that

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Jason, I want to show you this and we we couldn't do it.

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We didn't even try.

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See that swarm up there, that small swarm

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No.

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See the limb that comes out with the dead ends on it?

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Yeah.

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Then walk back down that limb and look at about a pound and a half of bees hanging there.

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Oh yeah.

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That was three or four pounds.

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And that's 18 to 20 feet up

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And I didn't even I didn't even I didn't try.

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I didn't know heroics on that one.

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Yeah.

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Jason, while we're here

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Let's look at it's one package.

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Yeah, that's fine.

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This this clearly.

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I don't have to do a thing in the world, listeners.

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This is a package I put in.

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One, two, three, four, five.

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They're on five frames already.

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So that's what I call a Gem2 inspection.

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That's enough.

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I'm gonna do one more

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and see what they look like just because it stuck down so well

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One, two, three, four and a half frames there.

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And they're stinging me.

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I got smoke going.

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Why am I not using it?

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I don't know

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I don't really want to harass these packages.

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I just want to believe they're okay.

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In a few another week or two, I will open them.

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If any of them are queenless, I just combine them.

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Jason, let's go out

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And look at one more small swarm, but I really can't explain.

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Listen, there's a small swarm showed up.

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I went over to look at a lily.

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And surprisingly, just above the lily was a small swarm.

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I hived it.

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It immediately left the colony and was gone for a day or two.

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I came back out

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And there was a swarm in the box again.

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And I don't know if it's the same swarm or if it's a different one.

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There's eggs in this one.

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One piece of comb and they are just barely hanging on.

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I need to feed them.

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I need to do a lot.

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But there's a queen in that one

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And it's about the size of a big softball.

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Oh wow.

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They were hanging right there, Jason.

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So what does it mean?

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When a swarm comes in here, a small one, had to be a mating swarm, did not stay in my box, and then two days later another swarm is there.

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Was that the same swarm that came back

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Or was that another mating swarm that was just attracted to the previous swarm location?

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I don't know.

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Listeners, I want to apologize.

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For spending so much time on this, but it really ener energized me.

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And I enjoyed doing it.

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Long runs.

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It was hard work.

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But it challenged me.

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It challenged Jason.

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Made me accept my age more.

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So I'm really happy to tell you that other than grass is too tall already, life in the bee yard is quiet and everything looks okay.

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I am trying to get my bee life back under control.

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I hope the swarming season is over.

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Jason, I've lost track of time.

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But I think we're done with this swarm thing.

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So let's make a vow that the next segment we do will not use the word swarm anywhere in the episode.

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Do you swear?

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I swear.

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Okay.

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Let's talk about antique hive tools.

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Yeah, let's talk about antique hive tools.

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Jason's a s is a blacksmith.

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And I'm on contracting to make me a hive tool you've never seen that was used to cut combs from the inside of box hives and skeps.

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I'll describe it to you later.

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But Jason has the expertise to do it.

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He just wants another $3,000 for that job.

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I'm running up a tab here.

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Listeners till next week.

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This is Jason telling you bye.

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Say bye, Jason.

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Bye, listeners.

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And this is Jim saying bye.

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We'll talk to you next week about antique hive tools or who knows what.

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Bye-bye.

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Is that a fire hazard to put that in there?

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I have to remember to come back and put it away