Swarmapalooza!!

[doodlemaier]

April 10th: I must be doing something right (or as conventional beekeepers would probably say: "wrong"), this was a third swarm kicked off by Brigid. I'm pretty sure she's honey-bound and every time a queen cell hatches She sees a full pantry and doesn't even bother killing the other unhatched queens, just up and hauls ass. Again, Mrs. called for me to intervene. I didn't have an available hive so I ended up gifting them to a beekeeper Mrs. is in contact with in Culpeper who was able to drive out to Strasburg after I retrieved them. I spent the following weekend putting together a makeshift fume board and bee escape. The weather on Monday (bagged out of work) was ideal for taking honey with a fumebaord - 80°'s, sunny, very little breeze. The Bee-Quick label claims the bees will vacate the supers between the board and the escape after about 5 or 10 minutes. Two hours after the fact I think I had more bees in the honey boxes than I started out with. The mistake I made was putting a thin wood panel lid on the fume board rather than making it just piece of sheet metal, so the heat of the sun wasn't able to penetrate and fully vaporize the benzaldehyde (Bee-quick's active ingredient). I've got a design in mind that I hope will right the issue, so I'll try again next weekend if the weather cooperates. I have no shortage of bee-box-building to do. I'm currently gearing up to place a couple of conservation hives with packaged swarms at a small farm in Winchester by May 12th, but I have to build them first. Swarmapalooza is providing bees faster than I can build hives - and that's beautiful thing! Even having gifted this swarm, I'm one colony up from where I was this time last year! In addition to the six splits Chuck procured from Frank he also ordered a couple of Italian packages from Georgia. He said that when he went to pick them up there were beekeepers reporting that they had also captured a number of swarms. 2012 is already known around here as the "Year of the Swarm". The last two weeks of March were unseasonably warm caused, I believe, by a very active sun cycle which I think triggered these early and copious swarms, and is directly related. Swarming is the way by which bees reproduce. Being a super-organism, when one colony divides into two or more it's true reproduction, whereas laying eggs to replace workers is akin to an individual growing hair and fingernails.

Comments

Swarming Queens

[(Anonymous)]

Very Interesting site. You appear to be doing good work. Just one comment. You stated that the new queen took a look around and saw the hive was full and decided to leave. The adjacent picture shows a large swarm hanging. It turns out that the older queen leaves before the new queens hatch, or just as she hatches. So the swarm contains the old queen, many foragers and many nurse bees. The virgin queen in the hive then leaves to "mate". She returns and begins laying and if all the timing is correct, the hive survives.

There are a small number of "foragers" that are more curious than the rest, about 6%. This is new. The curious foragers are the ones that look most aggressively for a new hive location. It may take two or three days, then the hive moves to its new home.

You have probably got hundreds of emails on this "who leaves first" question. I hope mine was useful.

Tom Mock at tommock@comcast.net

Re: Swarming Queens

[doodlemaier]

Tom, Thanks for your insight. I'm clear on the order of progression with the initial swarm (containing my 2nd year, over-wintered "survivor stock" queen) which I've also captured and she is, as I expected, going gangbusters! The original colony that cast these swarms seems to be doing fine and "normalized" after a couple weeks.

I'm still somewhat confused as to whether the casts (the 2nd and later swarms) contain a virgin or mated queen. This entry concerns the 3rd cast from this hive in under a two week period. I gifted this particular swarm and don't have a very reliable contact with the beeks who adopted them so as to check up on how they're progressing, but I do still have the two prior swarms this colony produced. I've moved swarm #2 to another distant apiary which they now share with an swarm of unknown origin which I captured in a bait box on the same day (Easter).

The 2nd cast seems kinda lackluster by comparison to the unknown swarm but otherwise seems to be doing well. I haven't been into inspect them but am confident through external observations (I see pollen return, I can smell the brood and queen-rightness) that a mated queen is present. What I'm curious about is whether this queen in question was mated in Strasburg where the swarm originated or if she might've possibly mixed it up with these mystery bees after arriving in Annandale (70 miles east of origin) which, if I had the luxury to choose, would prefer being that it would provide an advantageous explanation for the difference in performance between the two colonies, being that they swarmed on the same day. Plus, regardless of how I expand next season, the mystery bees are already a clear favorite for Gettin' R Done!