Chalk one up to Sui the Beeman. Finally a nearly perfect bee swarm recovery.
Having received a call from a lady at 11am, saying she had bees swarming in her back yard. I told her to just leave them alone, they would settle on the branch, took her name, phone number and address. At 3pm she called me back to say the had gone. "Bummer", thought I.
At 5:30 when I got home, I headed round to check on the compost bin bees of last Thursday. They weren't really doing I wanted so I stirred them up, and hopefully they will head back into the box I left. Got a small sting on the top left shoulder.
I left compost bin bees, thinking that as the other lady was around the corner (literally) I would swing by and check it out anyway. I am glad I did. When she showed me the branch that they had been on, I was pleasantly surprised by the sight of a big clump of bees, about the size of a basketball, quietly hanging from the branch. - "TEXTBOOK!", thought I.
The branch was about a meter off the ground, so I put a cardboard box under it (the box was a 2 part fruit box, which I had had the fore thought to get on my way out, - the holes of which my lovely assistant had carefully taped up) , held the brand above the swarm, cut it carefully off, and lowered the whole lot into the box. I put the lid on, and VOILA ! Amazing, one swarm of bees.
I thanked the lady, tucked the box under my arm (STUPIDLY) and popped it into the boot of my car. I took them back to my mum's place where I had a hivebox set up, up-ended the cardboard box into the hivebox, and shut the lid. DONE! "Woah! why can't they all be this easy?", thought I.
Then I got stung again. One bee had crawled into my clothes and up my back. It stung me on the left lower shoulder blade. A very inconvenient place to be stung. I feel like a hunchback at the moment.. not that i can think of any part of my personage I would like to have stung, that is...
I must say I am enjoying creating and being first in the daylogs of late. It's kind of interesting to watch others come online and add their daily stuff throught 'my afternoon' :)