All about swarming

Also, please see our article about Catching a Swarm.

For information about luring a swarm into a hive, click here .

You will know when your bees are preparing to swarm when you see queen cells (large cells that look like peanuts) on the edges of the comb. 

When your bees actually swarm you will see a large cloud of active bees flying around the hive within about a 10 foot space in every direction. You’ll then start to see the cloud of bees move off to find a resting spot on a nearby branch. At that point they form into a ball by holding onto each other’s bodies while the scouts go out to look for a new hive location. The time to catch a swarm is when it’s in the ball of bees before they set up in a hollow tree or wherever they find suitable.

Swarming season in the Boulder/Denver area of Colorado usually starts in late April and ends mid June.

There are several contrasting view points concerning swarming. One is that swarming is to be avoided at any cost. Economics is the main motivation here; in a commercial setting, having half of the bees swarm off cuts production in half. The other concern is that the bees would not be successful in "re-queening,” or producing another queen. This would render the hive lifeless in a month.

In our bee guardian practices, we support swarming in our hives, especially in the first years. When a hive swarms, the old queen will leave the hive with a portion of the bees. The new queen will mate with 10 or so local drones and acquire genetic diversity from that area. From an ecological standpoint, swarming is a natural process. It makes the bees healthy and happy, promotes genetic diversity, and encourages them to be productive. Suppressing a swarm discourages the population growth of the bees. It also forces a higher number of bees to live in the same space. Cramped hive conditions produces stress which lowers the immunity of that community of bees. And finally, suppressing a swarm prevents genetic advancement. We love the concept that swarming helps to re-establish bees in the wild, thus maintaining the genetic diversity of the bee species.

A genetically-strong bee colony will be successful at re-queening their hive after a swarm. The main reason why bees would not be successful at re-queening is that current bee cloning practices and splitting projects have depleted their genetic “innate knowledge" for the re-queening behavior. Naturally, a bee colony that does not re-queen will be "unselected" from the gene pool, which is disastrous if it is your hive, but once you have established a healthy hive, the possibility of swarming without re-queening is very low.

In saying this, we do manage some swarming. For many reasons we suggest harvesting honey in the early spring. One benefit of this is that early in the spring, the colony will know to focus energy on building more comb and storing more honey and not on sending out 3 healthy swarms. They may just send out one or none for the season. We also want to prevent the bees from completely abandoning the hive. This can happen when the bees have lived in the hive for 3 years or longer. The brood nest is re-used each year to hatch new bees. Each time an egg is laid in a cell, it is coated with propolis. Over time the propolis makes the cells in the brood nest smaller and the comb darker. Once these cells get too small to produce a healthy body size, the bees will leave the hive for a new home. To prevent this, we suggest harvesting the darkest brood combs after the hive’s 2^nd or 3^rd season. To do this we remove the comb from the brood nest and place it in the back of the hive to allow the bees to hatch the brood. It is very important to make sure that the queen is not on this comb before it is moved. We then place an empty bar in the front or back of the brood nest, to give them space to build fresh brood comb. When the brood have all been hatched we harvest the wax, or let them fill it with honey.

Therefore, we suggest supporting swarming in your hive, while finding holistic management techniques that allow the colony to produce maximum amounts of honey. If you want more honey than one colony of bees can efficiently produce, don’t suppress swarming, just start with two or three BackYardHives! And if you would like to capture your hive’s swarms look into purchasing a swarm trap which is sold by beekeeping supply companies. You can then put these swarms into a new hive.

Good luck, and have fun!

Tips for luring a swarm into a hive.

You can either try to lure bees who have already swarmed (perhaps they’re in a tree or a bush waiting for their scouts to return) or you can put out a swarm trap near an existing hive in the hope that they’ll simply move right in.

An older hive that once had bees in it is a good choice. If you have any, you could add some empty brood comb from one of your other hives. Queen pheromone lure also works well. Michael Bush’s suggestion is to use lemongrass essential oil (put it on a Qtip). Rubbing organic beeswax on the tip of the top bars is also definitely a good attractant as well as helping the new bees build straight comb once they start.

You could also buy a swarm trap. It is necessary to check these traps everyday during swarm season because it can become a terrible mess when you try to transfer the bees to a hive if they have already started building a lot of comb.

Mann Lake ltd. is mainly a chemical beekeeping company, but they do sell traps and pheromone lures.

Queen pheromone lure

Swarm Trap