bee story

So! On Friday at noon I got a text from York: "better get home soon. Bees are back." But so sadly, by the time I got home they were gone again. They had clustered on the umbrella in the garden, that is what the photo on flickr is from--the first time they came back. I kept my eye out for them, but they were gone. I set out a new hive in a new location and spread some bee pollen around the umbrella area. Saturday I went to a baby shower and came home. I said hello to everyone and then the whole family was walking outside to check out the soon to be tree house (another story) when York noticed the bees flying all over the garden. They weren't clustered anywhere, they were just buzzing everywhere between a spot on the grass and the umbrella. I sprayed some sugar water on the umbrella and on the few that were sitting together on the ground. I was worried at this point they were hungry and the sugar water spray keeps them from flying away. I thought they were going to cluster on the umbrella again, which would have made capture of the swarm easier, but they didn't. The queen must have been very tired and hungry and must not have been able to make it up to the umbrella so the colony swarmed around her on the grass. I sprayed them and sprayed them with sugar water then started to scoop them up into a box. I couldn't find the queen for a few minutes and worried perhaps she wasn't there, but then I saw her, caught her and carried her to the new hive. Once she was in there the other bees sweetly followed. I tried to make their new place as appealing as possible by leaving them a little saucer of honey, sugar water, and pollen. So far they have stayed and they seem ok.
I pulled apart and examined the old hive. It's hard to tell exactly what happened since the amount of bugs that have moved in to the old hive since is amazing, but it looks like the combination of my moving things around (thinking I was helping) and a few wax moths living in the honeycomb made them up and leave.