Success with a bait hive.

Beginners luck you might say. It was exhilerating to find a swarm this afternoon having deployed the empty box just this morning.
Scout  bees were seen to be entering almost immediately my work was done, hoisting the box up  into a tree, about fifteen feet off the ground.
I plan to leave them undisturbed for a few days before removing to a more permanant location about two miles away.

A few drops of lure scent was used at the entrance holes. The first fine day for a week and after some heavy overnight rainfall. A time when nectar flow will likely be very good. I had heard that swarming has begun quite early this year, so chose to make haste and was well rewarded. We have a small commercial apiary in the grounds of Powderham Castle about half a mile away. Whether this swarm sprang from there or was from a feral colony we may never know.

A version of my horizontal top bar hive containing twelve hooped bars of standard width.

Well secured to the tree

By late afternoon a full swarm had entered inside. 

Three weeks later and another swarm is bagged from the same tree. Roughly the size of a rugby ball and installed into one end of a top bar hive that already has a small colony at the other end. Separated by two queen excluders and eight empty bars.
If Phil Chandlers suggestion for combining two swarms in the one top bar hive works, I shall be quite delighted, but first they the have to go through the tricky stage of getting to know one another through a barrier of paper separator.

The transfer is made without too much disturbance of the hanging cluster of bees by use of the battens as described in my later post.

Beekeeping without any bees.

So the tension mounts, as my top bar hive stands empty, and my newly made swarm trap hive also lies empty, awaiting a kind host. At least I have a firm prospect of establishing one or both hives at a local farm, after the initial neighbourhood garden proved to be unsuitable due to its occasional use by children.
After the beekeeping course attended with Charles a couple of weeks ago, I was left with the impression that bees are generally well behaved, and not too dangerous. ( I was stung just once).

The air is buzzing with bees

However, I attended another learning session with a local beekeeping group, closer to home, where strong emphasis is placed on the safety aspects to be adopted by members.  I was loaned a suite and veil and permitted to watch procedural checks which are undertaken weekly. Tutorials are given by a mentor - one to one - and work is undertaken in pairs much like the buddy system used by deep sea divers. Smokers are all smoking and said to be a very necessary and potent pacifier of bees. ( I was stung just twice).  One vital use of the smoker, being to puff smoke onto the site of a sting in order to mask the scent deposited there by the bee, so as to avoid a multiplicity of stings.
Having grown accustomed to paddling my own canoe, so to speak, during my years dinghy sailing, the contrast is obvious, and the close human contact something I am going to find almost as much of a challenge as the beekeeping itself.
From out of the mouths of several others I have heard it said that asking the same question of half a dozen keepers will elicit a dozen different answers and each is to be regarded with a degree of scepticism.
I suspect that it requires two heads to handle a hive not simply because of the  buddy system safety aspect, but also because two heads are required to understand what is needed to make bees happy, and this long before any honey is gathered.