For Sure
April 26, 2024
Honeybees are out in force, and we’ve been doing everything we can to catch another swarm. Two years ago, we caught a swarm in the middle of May, but a bear destroyed the hive later that fall. Last year we didn’t have any luck, but this is definitely going to be the year. I just know it.
A healthy honeybee colony might have a summertime population of 50,000 bees but will reduce its size to about 15,000 bees by late fall. Only a third or so of those bees, and the queen, will make it through the winter. Now that the weather is warm enough, the surviving bees can start leaving the hive, and the queen having awoken from her winter’s torpor, will start rebuilding the colony’s numbers. The comb, which is mostly empty of the honey that sustained them through the winter, will be cleaned and refurbished so the queen can start laying eggs in it again.
Laying only female eggs at first, she’ll later add male eggs in time for breeding season. In her prime, a queen bee can lay up to 2,000 eggs a day (chickens please take note). As the population grows and the hive starts to get crowded, the colony will prepare to swarm. At this point attentive beekeepers will divide the hives themselves so as to avoid a swarm ever forming and leaving their bee yard. However, wild honeybees, which made it through the winter in a hollow tree somewhere, have no such keeper so their numbers will continue to increase until inevitably they swarm. Before leaving the hive with half the colony, the queen will lay “queen eggs” in order to replace herself. One colony magically becomes two - swarming is, after all, the ultimate goal of any bee colony.
Scouts will travel miles looking for the perfect place to start over, and hopefully they’ll realize our farm is the ideal spot to live. We never mow our lawn too short, so we always have lots of clover and we never ever use chemicals. We’ve hung the swarm lures in just the right trees at just the right height. They are constantly surrounded by an array of things in bloom, and there’s a reliable and easily accessible source of water nearby. There’s enough sun but plenty of shade. We put drops of lemongrass oil at each of the entrances – apparently bees love lemongrass. They also seem drawn to the minerals we put out for our sheep, so, we left some near the swarm lures as well. We enthusiastically rubbed the inside of each swarm box with propolis and pieces of honeycomb, so it will smell deliciously welcoming to any passing scouts. We have in fact done everything I can think of to welcome them – except perhaps to bake chocolate chip cookies and put out a glass of milk. This will be the year we welcome them home again. I just know it.
