What's All the Buzz: When Honey Bees Swarm

The gilded skies and dew drenched grass had ushered in what promised to be a warm sultry day in the heart of North Carolina's piedmont. All of us -- my parents, Minnesotans who bravely faced the change in climes for the sake of visiting the grandkids, included -- were busily focused on any of the several projects or tasks underway that morning.

The cry of the circular saw was fading and the mockingbird, perched high in the paper birch above us, laughed in anticipation of seeing another board nailed into place on the new chicken coop. The six big chickens were out, scouring the yard for worms and insects and the occasional small snake; the eleven baby chicks, at five weeks old, were in the caged "chicken tractor" under the watchful eye of one of the kids; and soaring high overhead was a red tailed hawk, seeking an opportunity to strike.

I heard a voice cry out, "Swarm!" It was my wife who had issued forth this one word; and instantly all of us -- well, all of us except my parents, who hadn't experienced this before -- knew what that meant. Our plans had changed for the morning, beginning with that solitary word. Hearing my wife proclaim that there is a swarm is in some ways similar to the effect one sees when playing the childhood game Duck Duck Goose. Sitting in the circle, the participant is almost lulled to a catatonic state from hearing "duck" repeated continuously as the "goose" makes his or her way around the circle, tapping each person on the head; then "goose" is heard, and instantly the new goose springs into action, standing up and chasing the chooser around the circle.

When our family hears "swarm," we know that one of the bee hives is now a fireball of activity and that a lot of effort will be made in an attempt to keep the bees from leaving the premises.

I looked over at the hives in the garden, and sure enough, one of them had a cloud of bees, each bee flying around the hive in a way that always reminds me of the science cartoons we watched in school of electrons flying around an atom. On warm spring days, hives always have bees coming in and out; but the swarming hive literally has thousands of bees in a small cloud.

The cloud usually settles in a nearby tree, wrapping itself around a branch and forming a solid ball the size and shape of an overinflated deformed basketball, sometimes even bigger.

Why do bees swarm? Well, the simple answer is that a hive has reached an overcrowded state and half or more of the bees, following the queen, leave to go search for a new home.

The slightly more complex answer is that a hive's goal in life is to swarm. Why would that be? The bees want to thrive and increase their population; a healthy hive will grow and become crowded and seek to expand.

It's a tricky balancing act for the beekeeper. As the hive's population increases, the beekeeper will typically have an empty hive box ready. When the hive's population is strong, the beekeeper may try to do a "split" and put perhaps half the bees into the new hive. The new hive then produces a new queen, and the cycle begins again.

If a split is done before the hive is strong enough, the danger is that either the new hive or the old hive (or both) will not be strong enough to sustain itself.

When bees swarm, the whole event happens quickly; in a matter of a few hours, the swarm can move from the hive to a tree and then from a tree to their new home, which had been found by the scout bees from the swarm.

We've had numerous swarms in our yard, usually in trees not too far from the hives. In this particular instance, the swarm landed on a tree just outside the garden area where we keep the hives.

It takes effort to capture a swarm. Fortunately, bees in a swarm are not aggressive; they're not upset or on the defensive. Their focus is on going to a new home.

This particular Saturday, the swarm was high enough in the tree that it was a little tricky attempting to capture it.

I set up the ladder against a lower branch, and then my oldest son (also a certified beekeeper) and my wife alternated as they held up a long pole with a combed frame and placed the frame next to the swarm. The bees were attracted to the comb and would gather onto the frame. The frame would then be brought down to the new hive, and the beekeeper would shake the bees off the comb onto a sheet so that the bees could easily go into the new hive.

Each time the frame was brought down the ladder, the busy beekeepers would search it, trying to find the queen. The bees are much more likely to remain in the new hive if the queen is in there as well.

We kept close watch on the new hive; the bees would enter, and then the bees would come back out and fly around the hive in a sort of agitated state because the queen was not yet there.

For over an hour, my wife and son climbed the ladder, gathered some bees onto the frame, dumped them onto the sheet near the new hive, and then climbed the ladder again.

Finally, one of them came down the ladder with a large mass of bees, and though they didn't find the queen at the time, they guessed that they had the queen. They dumped the bees onto the sheet and, sure enough, the bees went into the hive and remained there.

After a couple of hours, most of the bees in the swarm followed their brethren into the new hive, and my wife moved the hive to its new location back in the garden.

The attempt at capturing the swarm had been successful! And we now have another hive in our little enclave in the bee world.