Catching Swarms

A little worker bee takes a break from flying around scouting new bee home locations. (Photo by Tom Miller)

Catching Swarms

Every spring, beekeepers you may know will get just a little giddy at the mention of “swarms.” While members of the general public conjure up some low budget Hollywood disaster movie at even the thought, to a beekeeper a swarm is everything from “free bees” to an invitation to an adventure.

First, honeybees swarming are not something to be feared. In most cases, bees in a swarm are at their most docile. Full of honey before they left their last home, these bees are waiting for scout bees to locate new possible houses while they literally hang out – on your fence, the side of a house, maybe a nearby tree.  The scouts return to the bunch of bees, describe the potential home and the bees “vote” on which one they like best. Once the consensus is reached, the swarm will leave their spot and follow the scout bee to their chosen location.

Swarms have a very short life span, 3 to 5 days so if you see a swarm, please don’t spray it or swat at it, visit rollabeeclub.com for a list of area beekeepers who will come out to catch the swarm.

To go after swarms, beekeepers are like first responders, vehicles packed with extra bee suits, possible helpful equipment like a ladder and empty hives in various sizes.

If one is lucky, a beekeeper can entice a colony into a new home with ample space, hive frames already with places for the queen to lay and maybe a whiff of honey. To say that swarms are “free bees,” however, dismisses the work associated with catching a swarm.

To be successful in keeping a swarm in a hive, a beekeeper has to feed the colony sugar syrup, simulating nectar bees find in flowers in nature. In more than half the swarms caught, the queen also has to be replaced since most queens are old and past their prime in terms of laying eggs.

Even with good care, the national figures indicate 40% of all caught swarms make it through their first winter so in spite of all of the work, there still is a good chance the bees won’t make it.

Some beekeepers are also unaware that varroa mites travel on bees and small hive beetles travel with bee swarms, continuing to cohabitate with bees once they settle in their new accommodations. Stressed bees generate a pheromone that triggers the ladybug-size, black sub-Sahara African small hive beetles to go on an egg-laying spree, each female bug laying up to 1,200 eggs a day. At that rate, these imported bugs can easily take over a bee colony in less than a week.

Muslin kitchen towels are very helpful in swarm-catching, they help show what bees are doing. (Photo by Charlotte Ekker Wiggins)

In spite of the challenges, catching swarms are a lot of fun, especially those from one’s own hives. The secret is to find the queen and get her inside the new possible home. Once the queen is inside, the rest of the bees will quickly follow her inside.  All the beekeeper has to do at that point is wait until dark, close up the hive and move it to its final destination.

Charlotte

First Swarm of 2017 Season

First swarm of 2017 was about 15 feet off the ground in the tree in front of a county home.

First Swarm of 2017 Season

Most guides to swarm catching will say it’s best to catch bee swarms on warm sunny days so don’t do what I just did and end up catching the first swarm of this season in a gray, dreary day in the pouring rain.

Bees swarm in spring for a variety of reasons but basically its nature’s way to ensure the species survives. A swarm is the old queen taking part of the colony to a new home leaving the old home to a new daughter.

Most swarms have little to protect so are not aggressive, Hollywood’s version of swarms notwithstanding. Bee swarms do have a short lifespan to find a new home so sometimes end up in awkward places as they wait for scout bees to find new real estate, such as the side of cars, or buildings, or tree branches.

This bee swarm was about 15 feet high at the end of a tree branch, the ball of bees hanging onto each other as rain started to fall. My two rookie assistants were too excited to notice so I said lets move the truck bed under the swarm while I go get my equipment and wait until I get back. I thought with a little luck, we will have this swarm in a box before they know it.

Instead of waiting for me to put a sheet down on the truck bed and move the hive to the side right under the swarm, my two eager assistants had cut the branch down and knocked bees – well, everywhere. Cold, wet bees were in globs all over the truck bed, on the sides, on their shoulders, in their hair.  I looked from one to the other, then to the mess of bees all over the truck.

By now it’s a steady rain and they look at me helplessly as if this is a lost cause. I hand out turkey feathers and demonstrate how to carefully scoop up globs of soaking wet bees and put them into the hive. We cut the branch down to size and fit it inside the hive, add a second box and top, wrap the sheet around it and head home.

Once at my bee garden, I added sugar cakes to help absorb moisture I changed every couple of hours and kept separating globs of cold, wet bees. By late that afternoon I had more dry bees moving around the hive and both rookies had texted me their apologies with a promise that they would remember to wait for further instructions next time.

One happened to be helping at the bee club meeting the following weekend where we simulated catching a swarm, the white sheet getting whipped out almost immediately after I said now let’s pretend you have a swarm hanging from this corner.

When I turned back, the sheet was squarely on the ground with a hive ready to welcome imaginary bees. Now that made this first swarm catch a good one!

Charlotte