Yes it's Spring. And one of the rites of Spring around here is swarming bees.
I was down to only one hive over the winter but it was packed with bees. I'll guess around 50,000 in the one hive. I've got four hives around the yard and over the last month I've noticed a lot of 'scouts' checking out one more than the others. About a week ago, they swarmed for the first time. It was textbook perfect. The swarm settled into a tree just the other side of the fence in my neighbors yard. I was a little worried at first about how I was going to retrieve them, but I also wanted to give them time to take care of their swarming business, so I let them be for a few hours. Sure enough, after a 3-4 hours they swarmed up into a cyclone and marched through the air over to the hive they had been scouting out and settled in. I didn't have to do a thing. That's some well trained bees!
My one main hive swarmed 6 or 7 times last year, and today was swarm #2 for this year. I'm sure they will swarm again. Every year the first place they try and go is to one of the two Nandina bushes I have on either side of the workshop door because they are in full sun and warm. But it usually doesn't take them long to figure out the Nandina branches aren't strong enough to support their weight and they find some place else to roost. This year they decided to give the Nandina a go, as you will see in the pictures below. But, after a couple of hours, the branch they settled on began to droop, which actually made collecting them a lot easier. Like I said, these are well trained bees!
I went and got the top part of an empty hive and set it on top of a trash can right below the swarm and drooping branch. I let it sit there for an hour so the bees could get familiar with and accept their new home, then with a couple of quick snaps of the limb I shook them into the box and carried it over and set it on the top of the rest of the hive. I'm happy with this catch and think they will stick around for a while, but time will tell.
In the last picture, the hive in the background is my main hive that they are all swarming from and the one in the foreground is the one I just filled today. I wear one of those hats with a see through veil and hood, and a pair of gloves and did not get stung the first time. When the bees be swarming they're too busy to bother with anything else, usually....