Swarm Story

Isn't it funny how something so common and naturally occurring can happen every Spring across the whole country without you knowing a thing about it and then suddenly, once it happens in your own backyard, you wonder how you possibly could not have seen it before?

Bee swarms. They're quite common this time of year and clumps of bees might be found on signposts or fences, backyard trees, or even patio furniture. How could I not know anything about this fascinating and amazing natural event before now? And....importantly.....know they're nothing to fear and something to behold. Really. More on the fear thing later.

As a second year beekeeper, I was exposed to the topic through my beekeeping classes and reading. But that was all theoretical. Just recently I got first hand experience with a swarm.....my own hive. This post is to share that story so you can now say you know something about swarms the next time you see one.

Last year I started two beehives. The goal was to get them built up, store enough honey, and keep them healthy enough to survive the winter. The 'package bees' I started with come from the South so it is not always a sure thing they will acclimate to our Pennsylvania climate and survive our colder winters (see Backyard Beginner Beekeeper, Part 2 if you want to see what a 'package' looks like). It was a more expensive option to start with a local 'nuc' (nucleus colony, a small starter population raised locally) but now I see why it might have been a better option as one of my hives survived and one didn't.

Hives that 'overwinter' are ready to get going in early spring and start to rebuild in size to get ready to take advantage of all those flowering plants. As they build up, that's when swarm season starts. So this is the story of my one hive that survived and built up....fast.

Bees swarm for 2 reasons - because it's too crowded and they need more space and just because its their natural way to reproduce and promote the species. Essentially the swarm is the queen taking off with a third to half of the hive to find a new home leaving the original hive to make a queen of their own.

When a swarm happens, typically the hive has been preparing for weeks, making new queen cells and putting the current queen on a diet so she thins down and can fly better. To make new queens, they take a normal egg and feed it royal jelly, a special secretion they make for all bee babies, but they provide it for more days to make a queen. They also make a special 'cell' that is a little larger to fit a queen.

That is why you monitor hives closely in the Spring to see if they are making queen cells to try to head off their plans to swarm. Mine were making a few but I thought I had caught them all and removed them. You also try to create more room for them by adding boxes and enticing them to stay. But sometimes the bees just outsmart your best efforts =).

So one Saturday morning in early May, I took my son to karate as usual. When I came home and walked into my bedroom, I heard a loud buzzing ROAR and saw out my window a huge black moving mass. My hives sit right under my bedroom window. Ahhhh, my hive was swarming! My first thought was 'What a failure I am.....now I'm going to lose my second hive!'

I went down to watch the drama and take some video. It looks like absolute chaos with thousands of bees just circling madly in the air. But what looks like a disorganized frenzy, I learned later is actually some amazing bee behavior. When the hive swarms, all the bees fill their stomachs with honey for the trip. The queen isn't that great of a flyer so the first thing they do is find something relatively close to hang on while they figure out where to go. Scout bees look for a close location and then come back and 'dance' at the top of the cloud to communicate to the rest of the bees where to go. At their temporary location, while most of the hive hangs out, about 100 scout bees then go out in every direction to find a place to live. This can take just a few hours and is usually figured out within a day.

Luckily in my case, the first place they went was to a dead pine right in my yard that has been on the 'to do' list to take care of for quite awhile. Okay, I thought, I might be able to do something here. I had just attended one of my second year beekeeping classes and our instructor told us about one trick where you try to draw a swarm farther down the tree so you can reach them and get them into a box. He told us that lemongrass oil works as a good lure. I didn't have lemongrass oil but I did have a tube of lemongrass paste for cooking in my fridge. Would it work? Worth a try. I soaked a paper towel and fastened it to a lower branch and waited an hour or so. Absolutely no scout bee interest.

I was so worried they'd find a place soon and just take off. It was time to go to Plan B. Luckily my husband was willing to entertain the idea of cutting down the tree and letting a bunch of bees fall near him. That's love folks.

It did help that I reassured him from all my reading, classes, and obsession with bee-related YouTube videos, that swarms are typically docile. The bees stomachs are full and they have a hard time curving their abdomen to sting, and it's the one time bees have nothing to defend - no hive or honey supply - so they’re not really interested in stinging you. There are many videos of experienced beekeepers just scooping swarms into their bare hands. (For me and I think most beekeepers though, it’s always a good idea to err on the side of caution and suit up to be protected.)

And I know now that there is actually a small army of local beekeepers that, following a panicked phone call, are willing to go at a moment's notice to any location within their area to retrieve a swarm. Knowing that the bees are gentle at this time and they are essentially getting free bees, there are many beekeepers willing to come to the rescue. The important thing to do if you see one is to not disturb it (i.e. don’t spray with water!) and to call a local beekeeper (or police if you don’t know one). There's also a national directory that can be used as well (link in the photo above).

If you still have a fear of bees and don't believe you can stand anywhere near a swarm, watch 'Bees - Living for the Queen' on Amazon Prime. It has great explanations and features a swarm that occurred in downtown Graz Austria with the bees eventually settling on the wires above a local tram. Before they got to the wire, they were just swirling around people crowded on the street. Austrians must be a bee-knowledgeable bunch as not a single person was freaking out as this happened. I was trying to picture what might happen in downtown Philly - don't think it would be the same!

Anyway, back to our swarm story. I'm certainly not at the level of a local 'swarmcatcher' but was willing to experiment in my own backyard. Wolfgang donned my extra bee jacket and proceeded to cut down the tree. I had laid a white sheet under where I expected them to fall and had an empty temporary 'nuc' box (small cardboard box containing 5 frames) just emptied because I bought new bees for the hive that didn't make it thru winter.

The tree fell reasonably gently, and once they were down on the ground, we were able to scoop a whole ball of them into the box. Lots of pine needles in the mess as well but figured they would clean all that up after a few days in their new home. The goal was to get the queen in the box because if you get her, the rest just follow to be with her and protect her. The bees will actually act like air traffic controllers, putting their butts in the air and flapping their wings, releasing the pheromone of the hive....essentially telling all the other ladies 'Over here!'.

Look closely at the bees in the grass in the video and how they all just move to file into the box. Success! I basically 'caught' my own hive. It was thrilling and I was so glad I got to experience it to see how it's done.

So now the bees and the 'old' queen were safe and sound in a small 'nuc' box. I’ve since purchased a wooden nuc box to transfer them into since I would be waiting a few weeks to see if I might need that old queen as insurance. It’s likely I may face similar dilemmas in years to come so I figure it’s worth investing in the right equipment.

I am now in waiting mode because back at the 'old hive', the bees have to make their new queen. She has to go on her mating flight where she mates with many drones and then must return to the hive to start making bee babies and get going again on building up the population. If something happened to her (like a rainstorm or a bird eating her), I now had the old queen as backup to put back in the hive. This whole process can take weeks so I’m checking the hive weekly to see if any eggs started to indicate a new queen is there and working. No luck so far and I’m about to the end of a reasonable waiting period so next week I will likely need to insert a queen.

The great news though is while a hive is queenless and they have no babies to feed and queen to attend to, the ladies don't have anything to do but bring in pollen and nectar all day.

Ramped up honey production....a nice consolation prize for a hectic month of bee management. Sweet!

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Finally, I want to end with something I just read and really enjoyed. If you are just a bit 'bee curious' or just enjoy a good read, I highly recommend The Honey Bus by Meredith May.

She's a journalist who tells the story of her coming of age thru a difficult family life situation and her relationship with her beekeeper grandfather in Big Sur California. It's a heartwarming story and her grandfather's lessons about bees and life are really something that will stay with you.

Happy summer folks! Until next time!