Wild bees, rabbit's and chickens

Bee tree

We have not been to busy here this week. We cut more firewood, I had some old beams planed by a man here in town, Calvin is 87 years old and he let me use his wood shop and the deal was if no nails in beams free if I damaged the blades I had to have them sharpened. I was there all day Tuesday just talking to the old gentleman as the beams had no nails. The beams came out of my grandfathers tobacco barn about has far as I can tell they have to be a hundred years old, do not know what I am going to do with them yet. I ordered more chickens and they will be here this Thursday, Kenny Ray and I will be working on the new coop in days to follow as building some rabbit pens also as we have decided to sell meat rabbits. My cousin Lester will be picking us up our breeding stock this next week. Thursday I spent the day in Dayton as uncle Ken had to have a heart cath, he has a bad valve and will have to have surgery we find out this next week what date it will be. Our honey sold out this week my sister Jennifer took orders for all that I had ,  sold out all that was in the store here in town and my regular customers came to the farm for more and I did not have any to sell. Which brings me to the above photo. My neighbor told me about a wild bee tree, that they had started cutting up for firewood and found the bees inside they thought of me and called. So last night Kenny Ray and I went after some wild honey, only to find that there was no honey it must of been robbed by other bees. as the comb was empty except for some brood. I decided then to try and capture the bees I was able to pull some comb with bees on it and place in a hive, I then looked for the queen but was unable to locate her. I then began to put has many bees as I could into hive box, Thought at one point I seen the queen walk into the hive and a few minutes later some bees came out and began to fan the air out of hive. Which I took to mean they were blowing he scent to the rest of the bees so they would enter the hive. So we left about 10 pm last night and got up at 5am this morning to go get the hive, all the bees had returned to tree, and I started the process again this morning by scooping up some bees with my hands and baiting hive with some brood [young bee larva] comb. I will go back this afternoon and check. I hope they d as I would like to try raising some queens from the wild stock.

Me smoking bees