Can hardly contain the excitement...we are BEEKEEPERS!

We are QUITE excited...we are officially beekeepers!
Swarm season is upon us!  This is the time when bees naturally multiply, and the old queen leaves with some of the workers and "swarm" on a branch, the rest of the hive stays with a new virgin queen.  The bees that are now gone and swarming are usually very docile, filled with honey, not defending anything--they are looking for a new home.
How catching a swarm works--get them into a box, and as long as you get the queen in there, any that flew away or were out searching for a home will find her by her smell and everyone ends up in the box.  At night, the bees go home and all is quiet and calm.  Seal up entrance.  Take home!
Yesterday while D.H. was at work he called me to say there was a swarm (a really big one--he said it was a foot wide and 2 feet long) and so we called our friend Howard we met at the conference who uses warre hives (an all natural type hive that lets bees do their own thing), and he came to the rescue with bee suits (ours are on the way in the mail--arriving on Wed) and he also brought a hive! Well...on the way D.H. called me with the sad news the swarm flew away. So Howard came anyway and left the hive--good thing--who knew we'd get a swarm call THE VERY NEXT DAY!
At the supermarket today, the phone rings and a lady about an hour away from us has a swarm (about the same size as the one in oracle). He says he'll call her back and looks at me baffled--how did she know we are doing this? Me: oh yeah--did I forget to tell you--I added your name to a bunch of free swarm removal websites (and to "sweeten the offer" I said I'd throw in a free jar of honey if it all pans out and we get honey from the bees at some point). Well I guess it really worked because we got THREE calls today!!! Hahaha! D.H. said to me: "What did you expect me to do??--we don't have bee suits yet!" Me: "I just thought you'd put on your fireman gear!"
Then we had a real good laugh when he walked me through how bizarre the homeowners were going to feel when they thought they called a beekeeper and a fireman shows up....ahahaha!
Well actually it might have looked more professional if he had showed up in a fireman suit because instead we went to walmart and got him a big brimmed gardener's hat, some white tuille (you know the netted stuff ballerina tutu's are made of? yeah that--but don't worry it was white not pink :) and then we got a white high collared jacket. Put the tuille over the hat, stuffed it all into the collar of the jacket, zipped it up, and used white duct tape to close of the sleeves and the bottom of his pants. (haha Howard, I guess we should have borrowed your stuff!) Really we didn't need it because the bees were so docile but might as well take precautions, right? I attached a bunch of pictures if you want to see our creativity...or have a good laugh :)
The bees were great--10 ft up in a tree, right on the edge, needed only a little clipping. He shook most in the box and then the remainder that stayed (a small amount) we decided to aim and cut the branch so it would fall in the box...wish I would have gotten that one on camera...the branch fell on his head instead...ahahaha!
In the last picture you can see them all crowded around the mesh they were trying to get in through there, and then we oriented the hive south and then almost instantly I started seeing more go into the entrance. Maybe that helped.
So it all worked out :) Bees went into box, we took them home at night (there is no reason to wait until morning that we knew of.  We didn't see any bees anywhere and it was 8pm).
So....they are home now in our backyard--we decided to wait until morning to put the bees in the hive (wern't sure if we should have done it right away but every bee movie we've seen, the transfers are done during the day...)
The other 2 calls we got are trickier...if you have any advice would be appreciated, Victoria in Scottsdale, AZ had a hive in her well box, they opened the well box hoping the bees would leave...they did...10 feet away found a cholla cactus and made home about a foot off the ground under the cholla. They have been there 4 days now. It sounds like a swarm to me, but she thinks they are making "home"--she said all the "black" comb that was in the well box is now gone and they seem to be clustered around a dark object (hmmmm.....could the bees have removed the comb? They do live in a rural area so I wouldn't be surprised if some animal had eaten it). I'm thinking bees need a place more "hive like" then a foot off the ground under a cholla? If it is a swarm we should go out tomorrow with our make-shift "Walmart" suit before the bees decide to leave, if they are making a hive then it could be more dangerous and we should wait until Thurs when we will have our real bee suits. Any thoughts?
The other call, Amanda (also in Scottsdale), has a pond where hundreds of bees come to drink. She called 20 beekeepers and no one really seemed to care (maybe because this is just an instance where not much can be done). She was so glad to hear that D.H. gave her some ideas and said he'd call her back once he did some more research. We were thinking: 1) put a mesquito net over the pond and then provide water elsewhere that you don't mind them going? Or perhaps don't provide water at all and then they'd leave your backyard alone? or 2) we could put a swarm trap in her backyard--but there's no guarantee we'd even catch the bees that were drinking from the water... any thoughts?
Here are some pictures (and a video) of how it all went down :)

Our make-shift Walmart bee suit :)

The swarm!  They are all clustered around the queen

Clipping the branches that are in the way

Getting in position--ready to shake!

Standing back--looking at a job well done!

Bees are clustered on the screen vent--they eventually made it to the front where the entrance was located