Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
heading towards you in their hundreds, and then suddenly all was quiet again. That was
probably a swarm of bees.
As your colony grows - and it can very rapidly in the spring - you have to make sure
it has enough room. The queen needs room to lay eggs and the workers need room
to store honey. If the growing population does not have enough space, the bees will
swarm, and this is one of the most perplexing problems in beekeeping. It is especially
difficult for commercial beekeepers with perhaps thousands of hives to look after but,
even for the hobbyist with just a couple, it can be a daunting task to limit or prevent
this phenomenon.
If your bees swarm, there will be a long break in your colony's development because a
new queen has to be mated and built up in the egg-laying stakes. There will be fewer
bees in your hive to gather honey, and the colony will have to wait for some weeks for
new bees to go through the egg to adult-forager-bee process. Your colony may thus not
have the time to make a surplus of honey that year and, if it does, it will be very much
reduced.
What is swarming?
Swarming is honey-bee reproduction at colony level rather than bee-to-bee sexual
reproduction. In this way, honey-bees are able to increase their numbers by increasing
their colonies and also to invade new areas. Because this is a natural method of
reproduction and dispersal, it is difficult to stop it from occurring. Most swarming
occurs from around May to June in the Northern Hemisphere and from September to
early December in the Southern Hemisphere.
Preparing to swarm
As a result of certain conditions in the hive, the bees in your colony will raise new
queens. The process begins when worker bees make small cell cups on the comb,
mostly near to the comb's outer edges and especially along the bottom. These small
cups don't necessarily indicate immediate swarming as they may never be used but,
once the conditions arise that cause the swarming impulse to manifest itself, the queen
will be directed towards these cups and will lay an egg in some or all of them. At this
stage, the beekeeper must take note and commence swarm-prevention procedures. The
