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Catching a Swarm

May 27, 2022

 

In the spring as temperatures rise, a wild honeybee colony will shake off its winter’s lethargy when the trees and plants start to bloom. The queen, reinvigorated, begins to lay thousands of eggs a day, once again.  New workers and drones are hatched, replacing the ones lost over the winter. The workforce expands and soon outgrows the existing hive, so preparations for “the swarm” begin.

The queen, triggered by the overcrowding, will lay several new queen eggs to replace herself, and then she and half the workers will leave the hive in search of a new home. The swarm, now in transition, and momentarily homeless, will attach itself en-masse to a tree near the hive they just left. Hanging down like a giant swirling black beard, the swarm encapsulates and protects the queen while they wait for the scouts to find the perfect home. Flying up to six miles away, the scouts check out any promising cavity, looking for something with just the right size opening, at just the right height, in just the right amount of shade. Once the ideal place is located and consensus is built, the entire swarm moves in.

Meanwhile in the original hive, the one the swarm left behind, the new queen egg hatches, is fed royal jelly and is generally pampered by her court. Within days she takes her virginal flight and mates with the fastest healthiest drone around, returning to the hive to begin laying eggs.

That is how, in nature, honeybees reproduce. One colony, after casting a swarm, becomes two.

A few weeks ago, we hung a “swarm trap” with the hope of enticing a swarm to move in – and they did! This past winter I read quite a bit about how to build the trap, how to bait it, where to place it, and how to hang it, but it seemed so improbable that we would ever actually have a swarm move in, that I never got to the part of the book that explains what to do next! The trap we built can only accommodate them for a few weeks, so we need to build them a forever home soon before they outgrow it.

Like so many things in American agriculture – beekeeping seems to have taken a wrong turn somewhere along the way and our bees are paying the price.  All the chemicals that people are using on their lawns have taken a toll, but I also wonder if our attempted micromanaging of a highly developed ecosystem to myopically suit our own needs isn’t also partly to blame. Anne and I will give them everything they need to thrive, and more, but we’ll let them do it their way. I don’t care if we never get any honey – I just like watching them and knowing they are around.

Welcome my sweet industrious friends, we are so very happy to host you!

 

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