I caught a bee swarm. Well, two actually, but the first was just a few feet off the ground and easy to capture. Any beekeeper worth their salt can do that.

The bee swarm that I caught that was worth writing about happened to be at the top of a 60'+ high tree that I chainsawed down.

See, I was out checking the mail one day and noticed a low hum in the front of the house. Investigating further, the sound got much louder when I made it to the backyard. Turns out one of my hives was swarming and tens of thousands of bees were buzzing in all directions. It was chaos, especially for me as I watched a few hundred dollars worth of bees fly away. You get back here and make me honey! The bees eventually settled down at the top of a spindly spruce tree, well out of range of easy nabbing. I couldn't climb to where they were, nor could I easily shoot the branch they were on.

The only thing for it was to chainsaw the tree down or watch them leave forever. I chose the former, because I'm Nathan Invincible and that's the sort of thing I do.

I suited up and laid out a tarp optimistically where I hoped to land the tree. With a bee box ready, I got to work. When the tree started to tip, I pulled a reverse baseball catcher where I threw my chainsaw to the side and immediately zipped up the hood to my bee suit. This was gonna be a new type of chaos few had ever encountered before. 

The tree slammed into the ground, narrowly missing a few nice apple trees along the way. Tens of thousands of bees were furious and flying everywhere. All appeared lost until a small clump of bees started to gather on a nearby branch. The queen survived! Rallying her minions to her, after about an hour the swarm had coalesced right where I could reach them. With a quick snip, I liberated the branch and set them much more gently into their new home. At last, all was right in my bee kingdom.

Please contact me for your bee swarms in the Keweenaw area. I promise I won't say no to anything, although the next tree full of bees I knock over probably won't land so perfectly.