You have probably seen video of a beekeeper bravely grabbing a handful of swarming bees without wearing a bee suit or even gloves. The bees cover the arm, buzz around the head and yet, the beekeeper doesn’t get stung? Don’t try that at home! Swarming bees aren’t nearly as likely to sting as bees in a hive, however they might and sometimes they do.
Bees swarm because they need to move to create more room to be able to lay more brood (baby bees). This typically occurs during the spring from late March into June. The queen has one job in the spring and that is to fill her hive with baby bees.
Fun Fact- A queen bee can lay up to 2,000 eggs a day.
At the same time, the hive is filling up with honey. Once they have decided that they have enough resources, the colony will decide it’s time form a new hive. Once the queen has laid several eggs in special cells designed only for new queens, she prepares to leave with half of her colony and move to a new location. A few foraging bees become temporary real estate agents called scouts and start looking for the best place to build a new hive. Everyone else keeps binging on honey while the queen who is actually too large to fly, does the opposite in order to trim down a bit. The rest of the hive will have a new queen to take her place in a couple of weeks. There’s only one problem, the group moving never has a new home picked out when they leave.
The colony will find somewhere to literally hang out until they have located a new place to make home. All the bees cluster together like a large indistinguishable blob. Because they are all stuffed with honey and really have no-where to go, swarming bees are the least aggressive bees. Aggression only occurs when bees feel they or their hive are threatened. When a hive is threatened bees will put off an attack pheromone to let all the other worker bees know it’s time to help defend the hive. This pheromone is oddly similar to a scent found in some colognes and shampoos, which rarely can cause a bee to feel it needs to sting the wearer. Some bees are more aggressive than others, however once a bee stings, it dies.
Fun Fact- Only female bees sting
The scouts use the next few days to take a group of decision makers to all the potential build sites. Soon, everyone is back to work in their new abode.
Bee swarms can be found in some of the most interesting places. In a tree, a bush, on the side of a barn, even clung to a lawn chair. All too often this can end tragically for the colony as frightened people go straight for a can of pesticide. Different states have different laws regarding the use of certain pesticides on honeybees. All pesticides are regulated by the EPA and unless you have thoroughly studied the lengthy instructions on the bottle, can or box, there’s a good chance you are technically using that product illegally. At the most, they will only hang around for a few days before they find a new home. The the best thing to do is to call a beekeeper and stay safely inside until the swarm has been removed.
Swarm on the side of a barn
To collect the swarm the beekeeper places a hive underneath the bee mass. After a quick shake of whatever the bees are clung to, they fall into the box below. If the bees are clung to a flat surface the bees can be brushed into the box. As long as the queen is in the hive, the beekeeper can sit back and watch everyone else voluntarily join her. Swarms caught March through June will have plenty of time to build up all the honey they need to get through the next winter. July swarms will sometimes have to be fed or be given honey-filled back up frames to make it through.
A swarm of bees in May, Is worth a load of hay A swarm in June is worth a silver spoon But a swarm in July Is not worth a fly ~J. Ray – English Proverbs 1670
Very rarely, a hive will swarm late in the summer. This usually occurs because something has damaged their hive, such as a tree containing a hive being knocked down by a storm.
If a swam is never noticed, it will likely make its new home in a tree or sometimes
A cutout call for an established hive in a roof eave
unfortunately in a building. When this happens, the beekeeper will have to cut the hive out. These bees will not be docile. They have no concept of their hive being a part of your house. It is extremely important to refrain from using pesticides on them. If you attempt to spray them, they will sting to protect their honey and brood. If you were to kill the bees, they will rot in place along with all of that honey, wax and larvae. This will invite a whole army of new pests such as ants, roaches and mice in to clean up the remains. A cutout can take an entire day to perform and unlike a swarm collection, this service will have an associated cost.
In a perfect world we could just give a swarm those few days to find their new home in nature. This is not a perfect world, especially for honeybees. Outside of chemical poisoning, most threats to honeybees can only be managed by us humans. The safest place for a honeybee swarm is in a beekeeper’s hive.
Audrey L Elder ~ Fourteen Acre Wood
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