It’s been a year since we started beekeeping again.
The beehive is in the back yard with a view from the house. It is a daily ritual to stand by the window to watch them wake up. In the afternoon we sit on the deck and watch them drink water from a bowl.
Occasionally, Carolina wrens pick dead bees from under the beehive, a source of protein for their young.
When guests drop by, many will be suitable to inspect the beehive.
And of course the honey we harvest is a bonus.
One last sunny afternoon we noticed that the bees were more active than usual. There were so many in flight that we could hear them from the side of the house. They poured out of the beehive to fly in circles around the back yard. They raved. In other words, they were preparing to leave us.
Swarming usually occurs in spring when the flowers are fertile and nectar is flowing. This can happen for a number of reasons. In some cases when parasites or disease are a problem, the entire colony will pack up and leave. This is called escape. In that case we would have an empty beehive.
However, when the colony is overcrowded, only half of the bees swarm. Insects communicate using pheromones, chemicals that they detect using antennae. Perhaps the queen is getting old, her pheromones are getting weak. She lives two or three years, but she has to lay a lot of eggs. This is your job.
When workers feel any of these problems, they prepare for the swarm by forming a new queen. They do this by giving a larva a special diet called royal jelly that develops their reproductive organs. You stop feeding the old queen so she will lose weight so she can fly. When she finishes, she takes half the colony with her.
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The rest of the workers will take care of the new queen. There can only be one queen, so in Game of Thrones fashion, she kills all other potential queens before they hatch to take possession of the kingdom on her own.
Our new queen must mate before laying eggs. She will flee, mate with male bees called drones, and return to take her place at the top of the table.
Of course, something could go wrong before she comes back. Something she could eat.
In the meantime, the old queen and her loyal subjects, following her pheromone trail, will be looking for a new home. In our case, they gathered on a branch at the top of a tree. The workers banded together around the queen and remained unobtrusive for about a day. In the meantime, boy scout bees were looking for a suitable home, such as a tree hole.
Worker bees are not aggressive when swarming. They do not protect brood or honey. They completely ignored us in the back yard.
If you find a shoal of beards, just leave them alone. They’ll likely be gone in a day. However, if they settle in an inconvenient place like a wall in your house and start building a comb, don’t spray them with insecticide. Call a local beekeeper to have them removed. You can find one at https://scstatebeekeepers.com.
We were happy to see that there were still many bees in our beehive. The new queen had successfully taken on her royal duties. If we had to start over, it would cost a few hundred dollars to buy a core colony. There is a cheaper option, however: we could catch a shoal.
A swarm box is similar to a beehive. It is 10 to 15 feet above the ground and is often strapped to a tree. It includes honeycomb frames and a lemon-scented bait to attract Boy Scouts. If a boy scout likes what she sees, she will tell the queen. Once the queen and her minions arrive in the swarm chest, the colony can be transferred to a real beehive.
It’s like bee fishing.
