(Japan) Yesterday Kamitani sensei received a phone call about a swarm of bees on the side of a Pachinko Parlour in Nishijin, and he checked out a university vehicle and drove me over to see if we could pick them up. The swarm was a round, flat swarm on the side of the building, right above an exhaust vent. The bees may have thought the exhaust vent would be a good place to build a nest, but it constantly had warm air blowing from it, so I think they probably would have given up after a couple of days.
As soon as we arrived, I could immediately tell that they were European Honey Bees (EHB), known to Japanese folks as the “Western Honey Bee” or Seiyo Mitsubachi. Although I am most interested in getting and studying the native Japanese honey bees, I also wanted to get some Apis mellifera to fill a homemade top bar hive I have at my apartment, and to put in a couple of observation hives I have at my office, so I was happy to see them even though they were not Japanese honey bees.
The first thing I did was to use a box cutter and cut a small trap door in the side of the cardboard box I brought with me. After putting on my protective equipment (helmet, veil and gloves), I climbed up the ladder to brush the bees into the box with a bee brush (soft bristles so as to not injure the bees). I got down and repositioned the ladder to the left side of the swarm which made it easier to do. After brushing the majority of bees into the box, I climbed back down the ladder with the box and taped the lid closed, opened the trap door on the side, and set the box on the ground below where the remainer of the bees were located which did not get brushed into the box.
If the queen is in the box, the rest of the swarm will join them and enter the box too. If the queen is still up on the wall, then the bees in the box will leave the box and go back up on the wall. I could see that there were no bees leaving the box and the guard bees around the trap door entrance were scenting with their Nasanov glands in their abdomens, so I was pretty confident that the queen was inside the box.
The worker from the business that had contacted us went and got a ladder with a platform that I could set the box on so it would be closer to the bees on the side of the building and they would probably join faster. It took a while, but after 1/2 hour or 45 minutes, almost all the bees on the building had flown down and entered the box. It went very smoothly. That is how it is supposed to work. All that was left to do was to close the trap door, gather up our gear, and put everything in the car and head home. Kamitani sensei dropped me and the bees off at my apartment and I hived them in the home made top bar hive I had previously prepared for that purpose at the end of my veranda. Everything is looking good as of last night and this morning. I will probably move this hive to a friend’s house on Noko Island in a couple of weeks.