WHAT IS A HONEY BEE SWARM?

Honey bee swarms are one of the most beautiful and interesting phenomena in nature. A swarm starting to leave its home is a thrilling sight. A swarm may contain from 1,500 to 30,000 bees, including, workers, drones, and a queen. Swarming is an instinctive part of the annual life cycle of a honey bee colony. It provides a mechanism for the colony to reproduce itself.

If you see a honey bee swarm – a ball of bees in a tree or bush – that means they are seeking a new home. Help us find a good home for these bees – you don’t want them nesting in your house. We will send a local member out to retrieve the colony for a better chance at survival.

Honey bees are the only type of bee that swarms. It is a reproductive strategy of the bees, creating two or more new colonies from the original one. Swarming occurs mostly in the spring to enable the newly established colony sufficient time to gather sufficient food (nectar/honey) to survive the coming winter.

The swarmed bees form a temporary cluster or bivouac prior to moving into more permanent housing. While the bees bivouac, scout bees are searching the area looking for an optimal new home. Thomas Seeley’s book Honey Bee Democracy tells the fascinating story of how he determined what a honey bee’s criterion is for selecting a new home and how they make a decentralized, collective decision. Optimal criteria for a bee home includes:

• a dry, sheltered volume of approximately 40 liters

• an entrance 10 feet above ground

• an entrance small enough to reduce drafts and to defend

• an entrance large enough for bees to come and go

That optimal home often ends up being inside the walls or joists of somebody’s house…which results in an expensive extraction. Homes should be carefully inspected periodically, and all openings, even very small ones, should be repaired, and either screened or sealed.

Beekeepers try to control swarming in their own hives because a hive can lose nearly half of its workforce when it swarms. Fewer bees, less honey. However, beekeepers also like to collect swarms because they are free bees and they increase honey production.

Don’t hurt that swarm!

If you think you may have a swarm of honey bees, do not molest the swarm or kill them. You may decide to do nothing if you have a swarm. As a rule, the swarm will identify a new nesting site on its own and will move to it within twenty-four hours. The honey bee colony is less likely to end up making their home in somebody’s house

• The colony is more likely to survive if lives in a beekeeper’s hive where it can be tested for Varroa mites and other diseases that currently devastate colonies.

• With the help of a beekeeper, the swarm colony can produce an excess of honey (that beekeepers keep). And who doesn’t like local honey?