Wednesday afternoon I went down to the bee yard and found this:

It’s a little early in the season for this degree of bearding, but it is a big strong hive that I hope makes lots of honey. Anyway, I plan to look into it as soon as I can – in a day or two.
On Friday morning I arrived prepared to do whatever needs to be done to deal with it, but as soon as I got there I saw this:
Fortunately they didn’t go far…

I thought you might find this interesting, but don’t ask me how to keep them from swarming – I wish I knew. I did catch that one though.
So – Bee Keeping in May – Try to keep them from swarming. Also, consider doing a split or two.
Good luck with your bees.
BTW, in case you were wondering how you snag a swarm that is up in a tree like this one. I did it with a bucket-on-a-stick cobbled up in the heat of the moment…
