Honey Bee Swarms & Swarm Season
It’s February 28 and swarming has officially begun in Santa Cruz County! Woohoo! Swarm season is a really fun and busy time of year for beekeepers. If we’re not actively catching swarms, we’re managing our overwintered colonies to try and mitigate swarming.
The general public has some misconceptions about honey bee swarms. The phrase “swarming bees” can invoke a sense of fear in people because they think the swarming bees are angry or upset. But rest assured that couldn’t be further from the truth! Swarming bees are extremely gentle as they’ve just gorged themselves on honey to prepare for the swarming event and have no honey or babies to protect so they’re less defensive. In this blog post I’ll break down the details of swarming. Read on to learn more!
Swarming is a very important part of honey bee biology as it allows a successful colony to spread their genetic representation. The original “Mother” queen and part of the colony swarm to find a new territory and floral resources while a daughter queen is left behind in the hive to reign the original colony.
There are many factors that contribute to swarming. Some swarming pressures include a large number of bees in the colony, lots of brood, abundant food stores, and the presence of new queen cells. This overall congestion in the hive can lead to a reduction in the concentration of queen pheromone which triggers the swarming instinct.
The queen herself monitors her pheromone concentration and is stimulated to lay eggs into queen cups when levels are too low, thereby initiating the swarming process. As soon as the swarm cell production begins, the colony starts to change their behaviors. The queen is “put on a diet” by the worker bees. They feed her less food so she’ll lose enough weight so she can fly with the rest of the colony during the swarming event. The queen’s egg production declines and her abdomen begins to shrink in size. Roughly 3% of the colony’s worker bees take on the duty of “scout bee” and begin investigating potential new nest sites. Worker bees’ wax glands become hypertrophied in preparation for the intense wax building they’ll need to do once settled into their new home.
About 8 days after queen rearing begins, the original “Mother” queen leaves the hive with a third to a half of the colony’s population. Depending on the size of the original colony, the swarm could be a few thousand bees to upwards of 14,000 bees! Seeing a swarm in flight is quite exhilarating. One minute bees are swirling in every direction and the next minute they’re flying all together as one towards their destination.
Generally the swarming bees won’t move directly from their original hive to a new nest site. Instead they choose a resting spot, typically within 300 feet of the colony, and the bees form a tight cluster. The resting swarm can stay in that location for an hour or up to a few days, and sometimes they’ll move to another intermediate resting site. In this resting position the swarm resumes their complex decision-making process that will eventually lead them to their new nest site.
If you take a close look at the swarm, you’ll notice the scout bees dancing on the surface of the cluster. These bees are communicating specific information about the potential nest sites like cavity volume, entrance height, entrance size, and the presence of combs from an earlier colony. The bees' decision making process ends once all of the scout bees come to a consensus on the best new nest site. Once the bees are all onboard with the new home, they take flight to their destination. And just like that, a new colony is born!
If you’re lucky enough to see a swarm, enjoy it! The best thing you can do is let the bees be. Whatever you do DON’T call an exterminator as they will poison the bees. And DON’T spray anything on the bees or try to get them to move as this will aggravate them and make it much more difficult for someone to come remove them. If the bees have landed in an inconvenient spot (you’d be amazed at the silly places swarms decide to rest), call a local beekeeper! Explain where the swarm is and how long they’ve been there. A beekeeper will come and safely remove the swarm for you which is a fun process to watch, too!
If you see a swarm in the greater Silicon Valley/Santa Cruz County area, please give us a call! We’ll happily come remove it for you.
Thanks for reading and happy swarm season!