Bees and the Warre Hive

Since we don't have money and the last time we bought bees was a terrible loss it was decided the only way we would hve bees would be to catch a swarm. We were settled with that. Then one day while we were driving through town we happened upon a swarm in a tree. I may never forget how we captured out first swarm...

Armed with a cardboard box and a roll of duct tape we surrounded the swarm and taped it shut on the tree branch.
No equipment except a bottle if lemon grass essential oil and the homeopathic remedy Apis 30x. Yup. We were prepared. I still haven't decided if we were gutsy or just plain dumb. We ended up cutting the branch off and taking it with, swarm and all. Whatever the case, we got the bees home with no more than a bee sting each.

The next hurdle was the fact that we had nothing to put them in. I spent the next 24 hours building a Warre hive. Without power tools. It was awful but I got it done and then it was back to handling bees without equipment ... not even a smoker. I need to add two more boxes to the stack very soon...