Dear Jim:  I loved reading your method of retrieving a swarm.  We are also
second year beekeepers, and we weren't prepared for the one hive we had to
swarm so early in April.  We thought it was too cold to open it earlier, got
a warm week, had to go away, and came back to a very active hive. We planned
to take care of it that weekend, but when I looked in the backyard, I was
bees all over the place.  Then they swirled into the classic swarm and
settled at the top of our neighbor's tallest pine, which was about 30 ft.
high.  This was my youngest son's hive (age 10), and I couldn't let them get
away, so I called his school and asked Sr. Helen Loretta if she could fulfill
a request that she probably not had before.  Could Kevin come home and
retrieve his swarm of bees?  Stunned, she laughted and said yes. Kevin
borrowed the neighbor's two story ladder and went up it and the pine with a
pruning hook. Watching him in awe and trepidation, I told Wally, our neighbor
who thinks we're crazy now, that I sure wasn't going up that tree.  I'm
afraid of heights.  Alas, Kevin was not tall enough.  What a mother will do
for the love of her children!  When I looked down from about the 20 ft. mark,
I clutched the branches around me for dear life, and told Kevin never to
question my love for him.  All I could think was how angry my husband would
be at me if I fell doing such a silly stunt.  Directly above me was a very
large swarm.  It was bigger than a beach ball and just dense with honeybees.
 I stretched the pruning hook above the swarm, and after a lot of
maneuvering, hooked the main branch that the swarm was balled up on.
 Thinking of that mass of bees falling on my head, geared up as I was, made
my heart do a few flips.  At 45 yrs. I've had six children and several
surgeries, so I am not an athelete and not terrible youthful.  I pulled the
rope and prayed.  It didn't cut through the branch.  I wasn't strong enough!
 So, slowly, carefully, I began to make my way down the ladder, holding onto
branches, and still thinking of the thing hanging over my head.  The branch
bent with each step down, but it didn't break.  When I came within about six
feet of the ground, an idea began to form.  If I jumped backwards, the bees
wouldn't fall on me.  I couldn't go any further down the ladder though; The
branch would give.  So I did what I had to do.  I jumped.  One
hundred-seventy-five pounds descending quickly exerts enough force on a rope
to cut through a one and a half inch pine branch.  The branch came down, the
bees landed on a makeshift table right in front of me.  We scooped them up,
put them in a box, and drove to S&F Honey Farm in Flemington for a new hive.
 They stayed and now it is our strongest hive. In fact, it was just split.
 The "mother" hive swarmed two more times, another lower pine and a climbing
rosebush (that was the hardest yet!).  We had switched the supers so the
brood was on top and added an extra super, but they already had other plans I
guess.  After the last swarm, we went in and pinched all of the developing
queen cells.  I was getting pretty tired of climbing trees.  Neither of us
were stung.  Now, from one hive, we now have a total of five hives. It's too
many for our residential neighborhood.  For fear of the neighbors becoming
panicky, we are going to offer two for sale.  It sure was fun though!
 Learning from our mistakes, Bev and Kevin