Although we had four swarms take up residence in our bait hives last year, I’ve never actually seen a swarm of bees. That had to change sometime…
Our friend Eva spotted this swarm not far from our apiary this evening, as we were showing her our burgeoning collection of hives. She is also a beekeeper, so we teemed up to put them in a swarm trap. Unfortunately over half of the bees fell into the grass as we cut the sapling, and though we scooped handfuls into the box many were left on the ground as the sun set. After dark they formed several small clusters; hopefully they will stay warm enough to survive the night and rejoin their queen in the morning. We think the queen is in the box, as the bee traffic was definitely inwards rather than outwards.
Where did this swarm come from? I’m guessing hive #6B, a big three-box hive with emerging virgin queens. Young queens + too many bees = swarm, or so it would seem.
And why did they have too many bees? That’s a longer story. Hive 6B just happens to be the closest hive to #3, which was until yesterday a big booming three-box hive. Owing to some overly aggressive behavior, we decided to requeen #3, but they killed the queen we introduced and very quickly (less than two weeks after they last had open brood) developed laying workers. What to do with a big hive of laying workers? The bottom brood box went on top of an artificial swarm split pulled off of #5 yesterday, with the bees shaken out front to prevent the laying workers from attacking the queen. The top brood box went on top of #6, also an artificial swarm split (with the original #6 queen, hence retaining the number) that was now in need of a second box. Those bees I shook out in front of #2B, a hive in need of a population boost. The super, also full of bees, I put on top of #6B with a newspaper combine.
Now hive #3 had about 50,000 foragers and virtually no nurse bees, having gone two weeks with no brood to care for. With their hive gone, most of those foragers chose #6B as their new home, and even after dark last night the entrance was bulging with bees. It seems they decided to relieve the pressure today by swarming, hopefully with a queen. The swarm itself looks to be 75% golden bees (presumably from #3) and 25% dark bees (presumably native to #6B).
And then there were ten.
I will feel much better about this explosion of colony numbers when we have a few more laying queens. Thankfully the weather is looking great for queen mating this week. ‘Tis the season to go forth and multiply, and our bees definitely got the memo.