Swarms | Beekeeping in Richmond, Virginia

Bring Your Snippers on a Swarm Call

A swarm of bees hanging from a Pine tree limb — This is a bunch of honey bees!

When I originally published this post, it was late at night and (in retrospect) I was not very informative about any of it! So, I have decided to revise it a bit and maybe review how I tackle a swarm.

When I get a swarm call, the first thing that I do is ask for a picture. In the early Spring (right now), I really do not have much risk, but as the days get warmer, it is not uncommon to have someone report a bee swarm that ends up being hornets or wasps/yellow jackets. So, when it does get warmer, I pretty much require a pic before I go about gathering the equipment and making the trek out to collect them!

Catching a swarm of bees is fairly simple, assuming their location is accessible. My main goal is to bring a Deep hive body (sometimes, although rarely, I bring a Nuc box) with 10 frames. Ideally, I would like the frames to be mostly foundation (and I sometimes do it with all 10 frames being foundation.) Swarms tend to really draw out comb, so I like to give them plenty of space to do that. Fresh, new comb is the best.

Once I get to the location, I set the box up on the ground, beneath the swarm. My goal is to shake (literally) the bees into the box. I will remove about 6 frames from the center, before I do the shaking, to provide a “hole” for the bees to plop into. Once they are in the box, I gently (but fairly quickly) put the removed frames back into the box and put a top on them. 90% of the time, the bees are “hived”, as they say, right then.

The key is the queen. When you shake the bees, a lot of bees fly into the air and some might even remain on the limb you did the shaking from. There is always a chance that the queen is not in there (which is a problem for me – I do NOT requeen a swarm.) I can normally tell by the way the bees are acting on the landing board – typically, when I have the queen, lots of bees will come out to fan outward, shooting the scent into the air to advertise that this is where the queen and everyone is, come on home. I also see bees actively moving INTO the hive. These are all good signs (although not guarantees) that I have the queen.

At this point, I almost always leave the box on the ground to come back and get them that evening. Once I tape them up and get them to their new home, I immediately (it will be night) open them back up so that they may immediately start flying when the sun comes up. This is a fairly good review of how I get her done. Very, very rarely, I will come back to pick them up and find no bees in the hive. This doesn’t even happen once a year (it didn’t happen last year), but it does happen. A lot of folks take precautions to prevent the bees from leaving.

The above video was an atypical swarm – I usually can get the swarm with my feed on the ground. In addition, I mistakenly grabbed the wrong deep which sucks (this deep was mainly for Nuc creation – I like to replace frames that I take from the mother hive with drawn frames this time of year). Regardless, the bees were hived and are now. The snips made all the difference in the world on this swarm call – it’s a tool I take with me on all calls:)

First Swarm of the Season…

Normally, this would be a happy post – catching my first swarm of the year and really getting into the beekeeping “spirit”! But, it has a bitter taste, thanks to HiveTracks (a tool I definitely no longer recommend.)

As happens most of the time, the call came at a very inopportune time. It was a couple of hours before dark and I was on my way to change a flat tire on my Pop’s car. Not only that, but I had my daughter with me. Fortunately, the tire change went quickly and I was able to bribe my eight year old with a dinner out (she had been in my truck for a good bit, so I felt obligated to offer a carrot!)

On the slightly negative side, the swarm was at one of my apiaries. I do not mind swarms, as long as I know when they have happened and I have already taken advantage of the hive’s build up through Nuc increase (more than one!) I had only taken one Nuc from this hive, unfortunately. On the plus side, this swarm was a few feet off the ground, in friendly territory, from a 5-star hive (presumably with one of my better queen lines) and a great opportunity to show an 8 year old a bit of the magic in beekeeping!

Swarm of bees hanging from branch — My daughter tentatively looks at her first swarm!

The catch went fairly uneventfully, although I am used to all of the bees going into the catch hive body after I drop the main mass into it. This time, there were a lot of bees hanging onto the side of the catch box when I left. Normally, I might have gotten the box this evening, but I decided to check on it tomorrow.

Lots of bees hanging on the outside of a swarm catch hive — Most of the swarm is inside..

Interestingly, I had just been thinking about making a post about a hive that I helped a lady with this past weekend with a couple of capped swarm cells, mainly to give folks a heads up about getting into their hives. It turns out, one of my own hives was going to teach me the lesson myself. Although I should spend a whole post on this, suffice it to say that this was 100% due to some crazy update that HiveTracks made to their tool. They seem to have hired some UI guys that might have a hive or two to make some major changes to their app. It completely butchered the To Do list, which I find to be one of the most useful parts of the app. When I heard about the swarm, I immediately remembered looking at a hive in that yard on Mar 13 and noting (in HiveTracks) that I needed to take one or two Nucs from it within a week. But, that To Do was lost in the new HiveTracks. Needless to say, I am moving everything off of HiveTracks, but more on that later. I do not recommend that tool anymore.

March Swarms

So, here I am, fairly confident that we are only about 2 weeks ahead of schedule in my beekeeping world and a buddy pings me with a large swarm caught in New Kent County, yesterday!!! For the most part, I have to tell myself that Mother Nature knows best, but having seen hives swarm in November (0% chance of success here), I know she sometimes is just experimenting…

Regardless, I took a few hours off today to dig into some of my Henrico hives to see where they were. Based on my findings, there are a few walking drones about and, maybe, a few flying, but I cannot believe this is a good time to create a Nuc yet. I created one, off of a very strong hive, just for kicks, but am thinking that this Saturday is going to be my first big Nuc day, with the following two weekends being even bigger.

For me, the main focus right now is prepping for April. I want lots of frames with foundation and a good bit of prepared drawn comb for the coming weeks. In general, I have found that placing foundation in hives (in March) does nothing to increase space in a hive. The bees do not seem to really draw out those frames – all I have accomplished is to reduce the number of frames that they are working! But, come mid-April, all of that changes and they readily accept the foundation.

The final oddity that I will mention is that I discovered that one of my queens had somehow gotten above the queen excluder over the Winter… Things like this turn an inspection from a 20 minute “breakdown/clean/level” to a 45 to 60 minute “hunt for the witch”. Fortunately, I found Her and she was marked Blue! Argh! There goes the “they must have had a late 2016 swarm and the virgin moved up there before she became big” theory! This one was my fault. My note taking has become somewhat lax or exists on multiple pads or scraps of paper (never easy to find!) So, I bit the bullet and started to use Hive Tracks. We shall see how it goes.

Queens, Swarms and Queen Excluders

On Mother’s Day, I received a call from a fellow on the north side of Richmond about a swarm. It was a 25 minute drive and from a location that I have not collected a swarm before. Plus, he kept going on about how big the thing was, so I couldn’t resist!

But, Sunday was becoming very tough. I wanted to go spend some time with my Mom, plant another round of beans, squash, cukes and melons, and (of course) had 5000 bee tasks to do. When I decided to get that swarm, I decided it would be a ‘grab and run’ job. I rarely do these (truly – I’ve done maybe 2 of them and both of them were in the distant past when I would actually drive an hour to pick up a swarm.) This kind of swarm pick up focuses on dropping the swarm in the hive body, waiting a few (maybe 5) minutes to see that the bees are not reforming on the tree and some are coming into the box, taping them up and leaving. I effectively leave a lot of foragers at the site (scouts, out and about) and risk not having the queen. Normally, I’d leave the hive body there and come back after dark. But, with my current schedule, there was no way that was going to happen today.

At the site, the swarm was 5′ off the ground and an easy catch. As I talked to the land owner, he asked if I thought there were multiple queens in the swarm. With good confidence, I replied that it was unlikely. The size of this swarm said to me that this was a primary swarm and the new queens had probably not hatched yet. The next swarm would have a better chance of having a couple of queens. Heh. I should have known that this was major foreshadowing…

So, with a haul back down the 64/95 Exchange, I made it there and back in about an hour and setup the swarm box before I headed out to the bee yards to check honey supers. This is my favorite time of the year, as a full hive can draw out and nearly full a full Medium super in a week. I don’t like any of my hives to be lacking space!

Within 30 seconds of opening up the hive the bees were everywhere. Having seen my first swarm just weeks ago, I realized they were ‘re-swarming’ (or basically absconding!) I couldn’t blame them as they probably were thinking that this new home sucked with all of the jostling and so forth they went through only moments after I shook them into the hive body. Seeing them begin to collect on a nearby bush in my backyard, I grabbed a queen excluder and placed it under the primary hive body that still had most of the swarm. I didn’t have time to deal with these troublesome bees, I was getting irritated that I had wasted time getting them (on a very busy day) since they were acting like they were going to leave again and I figured this was my only chance to have a chance at keeping them.

I had never done this before, but had frequently read online about beekeepers in the South putting a queen excluder beneath a hived swarm to keep them from absconding. I figured that if, by chance, the queen had not yet left the box, I could manage to keep the swarm (and the small half-quart of bees hanging on the bush would return to the main hive when the queen didn’t follow them.) I worried about killing the queen, as the bees were spazzing out when I put the excluder beneath them, but I simply didn’t have time and was actually getting mad at the bees (heh – a character flaw for sure, but times were tough on Sunday!)

When I returned that evening, there that little troublesome ‘child swarm’ was, still clinging to the bush at night. I could still see a bunch of bees in the original swarm hive, about 15 feet away, so I figured this little extension were simply rebels without a cause (queen) and blank ’em. Of course, the next day at work it was constantly on my mind. And, as is always the case, I was so busy at work, I had something like a 40 minute window at work to deal with them. So, I hustled home and hived those troublesome bees in a small Nuc and left it at that.

Now, here’s the first mistake. It did dawn on me the next day that maybe there were two queens. I also began to wonder that, even if there was just one queen, what if she was actually a virgin and I had her tied up in that primary hive with the queen excluder, unable to go out an mate? I actually had this thought multiple times, but never go around to acting on it until after work on Friday (5 days after catching the swarm.)

Going through the big hive/swarm, I found the little queen. Indeed, she was a virgin and no eggs were in sight. The big dilemma is ‘has she gotten too old to mate’? I have no idea how something like that would work. I removed the excluder and will give them a frame of eggs from one of my big hives in an outyard on Saturday, just to be safe. They had already drawn out 6 frames in the Deep and I wasn’t even feeding them. I then checked the Nuc and VOILA, there was the old queen (or at least a full sized queen that had started laying eggs pretty much the day I hived them, so I assume she’s a yellow queen – that’s what I’ll mark her with before moving them to a full Deep anyway.)

So, maybe the swarm wasn’t trying to leave after all. Maybe the old queen simply broke off from the main bunch after I set them down. Who knows how many queens may have been in that original swarm. Regardless, the lesson learned for me is that I absolutely cannot delay in getting that queen excluder off of a swarm (assuming I ever use that trick again.)

Crazy Swarms

With everything going on from monitoring Nuc’s, creating new Nuc’s, keeping honey supers on the hives and making sure that any hive that swarmed has a viable, new queen, I often farm out swarm calls to folks that I know. The primary exceptions to this rule are my own swarms (I want those genetics) and swarms from locations that I’ve never collected a swarm from (again, a chance for new genetics.) Over the past two weeks, I’ve had some really wild swarm calls! I’ve outlined a few of them below.

Swarm on Sappling — Could They Be Any Lower!?

I received a call from a fellow way out in the West End, talking about a colony of bees trying to set up home in a tree by his driveway. Of course, this was just a swarm waiting to find a new home and I decided to go get it (I’d never collected a swarm that far out on River Road before.)

When he said ‘tree’, he really meant ‘sapling’! These bees were no more than 6 inches above the ground (the bottom of the swarm was anyway.) Not only that, but they were pretty much all on the trunk of the small thing! There was no way to shake these bees, that was for sure. Fortunately, my pop’s old rule of ‘always have a piece of rope and a 5 gallon bucket for any task’ saved the day. Using the 5 gallon bucket, I literally scooped the majority of the ball into the bucket (it just plopped into the bottom) and subsequently poured the bees into the waiting hive. I then repositioned the hive to point to the tree and the rest soon followed! Bonzai!

Swarm on Pine Tree — My hive swarms to a nearby pine tree!

The next swarm was in my own backyard! I knew these gals were going to swarm and had already taken a fair number of bees to create a few nuc’s, but figured they would go anyway. The best thing about this swarm was that it marks the first time that I have actually SEEN a colony swarm! I’ve heard a million folks describe it, but I had never seen it (odd, given the amount of time I am around hives.) It was awesome as they roared through the air and finally came to rest on one of my trees. In the end, it was nature’s way of splitting my hive for me.

Finally, one of the wildest swarms happened in one of my yards out in Charles City. I had been watching the hive since it had a White queen and wanted to preserve the genetics. But, apparently I wasn’t watching closely enough. When I stopped by to check honey supers, I noticed that one of the hives was bearding. It was sort of cool, so I thought this was odd. I took a closer look and noticed that they weren’t really spilling out of the entrance, but hanging on the BOTTOM of the bottom board!

Swarm on Bottom Board — This queen must not want to fly!

In truth, I didn’t recognize it as a swarm on that day and just wrote it off to weird behavior. I was in a hurry to consolidate a few Nuc’s for sale and check on some queens that I was rearing. But, those bees kept nagging at me. The next day at work, I couldn’t stop thinking about them. Finally, I left work and headed back out to Charles City to get them. I figured it MUST be a swarm. It didn’t make sense otherwise. I had to take the hive apart, so that I could lift up the bottom board and shake them into a nearby hive. Several of the honey bees fell to the ground around the hive stand, but I went to look at the bees in the hive. I didn’t see the queen, so I returned to the hive stand with my brush and a piece of paper to sweep up the remnants. There, right before my eyes, was that daggone white queen crawling around with a few of her fallen brethren!!! Heh. I picked her up and placed her in the hive. One more for the books!

Reversing Reconsidered…

One of the tactics utilized in March (in my area – central Virginia, near Richmond) to prevent or discourage swarming is a tactic known as Reversing. Simply put, you take the top brood box and move it to the bottom of the set-up. The strategy is based on the idea that the bees will have eaten their way up into the top box by the end of Winter and the bottom box will be empty of brood (or mostly empty anyway.) By putting the empty space above them, the bees are less likely to feel crowded and will move up into it.

For some time now, I have resisted this technique – primarily because one of the premier beekeepers that I follow has always been negative on the concept. He believes that this technique simply sets the bees back, forcing them to reorder their living space, rather than dissuading swarming.

This year, I had several hives that had pretty much empty Deeps beneath them and they swarmed anyway. I’m not sure if this is simply a factor of the weather and genetics (the bees simply were going to issue a reproductive swarm and did so, regardless of any external influences by me – or empty space beneath them), or maybe the fact that I did not reverse them when I could have.

I honestly do not know the answer, but this year will drive me to do a lot of experiments over the coming few years. I will start tracking the colonies that can be reversed and reverse half of them. Maybe reversing is not a bad idea in my area.

Beekeeping 201 and Swarm Cells

Yesterday, I held the first Beekeeping 201 Class, focusing on Spring Nuc’s with a hands on workshop in my yard. The class was pushed back a week, due to the wild weather of March, which effectively created a wild ‘lab’ for everyone. I told everyone that we might find one of the hives in ‘swarm mode’, but didn’t realize both of them would be well into the process.

In both of the mature hives at my house, we found multiple swarm cells, some of them capped. Traditional wisdom (or, as I like to call it, manic traditionalism) will tell you that a queen and the swarm leaves when the cells are capped. Never really believing a good bit of the nonsense that folks espouse, I forced the class to bear with me while I checked every frame for the old queens (just in case.) In both cases, we found the marked queen running around on the hives (yellow marks)!!!

This was GREAT news, as it enabled me to spawn a few Nuc’s with the queen cells AND create two Nuc’s (1 for each queen) for the old queens. I left at least 2 swarm cells in both parent hives (in one parent hive, there are more like 6 swarm cells – I will probably go rob a couple of those tomorrow, when I have more time to make up a few more Nuc’s. Although we did not create Nuc’s with eggs, I was able to show the class what I believe is the ONLY way to prevent a swarm – take the old queen and let her start a brand new hive. I think the class enjoyed the session.

We also marked a Queen in one of my Overwintered Nuc’s and upgraded it to a Full Deep. In all honesty, this queen was well behind most (if not all other) Overwintered Nuc’s in my backyard. I had already split two of them, taking the queen to a full-sized Deep and leaving the upper Nuc (with eggs) on the old Nuc’s stand to receive the foragers. I’ll finish them today, unless it really does rain all day.

As usual, it all comes down to time and not enough of it. I actually knew that the two hives in my backyard were at risk of swarming, but was willing to take the risk for the class. But, I also found swarm cells at two hives out in Charles City, later in the afternoon. I cannot say that I ‘purposefully’ allowed those hives to enter swarm mode. Instead, it was simply a matter of getting around to those hives in the little time that I have had this Spring.

On the plus side of things, I have now gone through every hive and know for certain that I lost 5 of them over the Winter. Unfortunately, one was lost to starvation (which will, no doubt, elicit the chorus from my readers that spend all Winter feeding their bees – ‘I TOLD YOU SO!’) But, losing this one hive to starvation will not change my ways (I will still not waste my time feeding my bees in the Winter…) I learned (or re-learned, once again) that I really need to cull my weak queens. The hive that starved actually was started in 2011 and swarmed in July of last year (or maybe end of June.) The queen that replaced the previous grand ole lady struggled into August and beyond. I probably should have combined them, but I wanted to give them a shot at making it.

For what it is worth, I did take two supers of honey off of them. But, according to my notes, I left a bunch on. Maybe I misjudged. Oh well – one more for the head scratching times…

Ain’t Worth a Fly!

A swarm in May is worth a bale of hay, a swarm in June is worth a silver spoon and a swarm in July ain’t worth a fly! I’ve repeated these wise words from my father and grandfather many times on this blog and it has always been proven out. But, I think I may have finally found an exception.

Although I have received more swarm calls this year, I have retrieved far fewer swarms. Basically, once you attain a certain ‘mass’ of bee hives, it is simply easier to create your own hives from Nuc’s and Splits than it is to go get a swarm (unless it is just down the road.) Plus, now that I have a sustainable ‘mass’, I like to build my hives off of either my best queens or the exceptions that will give me experience. An example of the latter case exists today in a really strong hive. As a Nuc, the queen was laying so poorly that I was about to pinch it as I do all of the queens that I do not believe are ‘good enough’ for sale. This time, I decided to let it roll and see what happened. Would this hive peter out and succumb to wax moth or SHB? As it turned out, this queen started to really pour it on about 6 weeks after she started laying. It makes me really wonder about my queen judging ability at the early stages.

But, I have really digressed… I received a call on July 9 for a swarm that was outside of my normal range these days. But, the picture had my interest peaked – it really looked strong. I actually thought that it might have been an ‘abscond’ from the wild storm that had come through the week before (maybe their tree had been toppled?)

So, I went out to get the swarm and had to actually climb a ladder, snip off the limb with the bees and walk them back down the ladder to hive them. A lady filmed the experience and said she would email me a copy, but I have not heard from her yet. Regardless, the hive pulled down 2 gallons of syrup very fast. This typically only happens with a strong swarm. I gave them 3 more gallons the other day and will check them again on Thur. The next time they go empty, I plan to check the hive for temperament, a laying queen and other things. I could be wrong, but I am betting that I’ll have most of the initial Deep drawn by the weekend. We shall see.

Let’s Have a Picnic!

The other evening, around 6 pm, the cellphone rings and a fairly nervous fellow begins to explain that a mass of bees has created a nest under the picnic table at his work! Based on the initial description, I immediately thought ‘yellow jackets’ (and that’s not something I tangle with…)! But, as he went on to explain the scenario, it became clear that he had a swarm of bees under his picnic table… Weird, I thought. I am used to swarms hanging on branches or gutters, but under a picnic table?! His business was down in Colonial Heights, just to the south of my home outside of Richmond, Va, so I assured him that I would be down there in a little over an hour to take care of it.

From this guy’s tone, I could tell that a little over an hour was a little over an hour too long. But, there was nothing for it. I had Anne Katherine in my charge and I wasn’t about to take my daughter on a swarm call. That would be bad for both daughter and pop (once mum found out….) So, I waited for my relief (mum-in-law), placed a call to confirm that they were still there (Oh Yeah! They’re still here!) and off I went, arriving about 1.5 hours after the initial call.

And there, handing from the bottom of the picnic table, was a very nice swarm. In addition, several fairly nervous men were about, keeping their distance. I could tell what the problem was, as the picnic area was just outside of the main work entrance to the warehouse. Interestingly enough, the men all thought the bees were building wax and creating a new home. Of course, this got me to talking about bees and how they were not building a home, but ‘hanging out’ while the scouts found a new home for them, either in a tree or someone’s attic. They mentioned that the maintenance guy had offered to spray the bees with Raid, but they decided to try to save them instead! I owe the manager some honey for that one.

Hiving the swarm was pretty easy. The Deep body slid perfectly beneath the seats and under the mass. I got on one end, lifted the table about a foot off the ground and dropped it. The ball fell neatly (well, not THAT neatly, but good enough) into the hive body and that was that. I waited around for about 45 minutes for the foragers to come home and off I went.

Should Have Been Here Last Week!

Pic of Honey Bee Swarm in Chesterfield, Va — Honey Bee Swarm in Chesterfield, Virginia

I received a swarm call referral (through David Stover) from a family down in Chesterfield (Andy and Pat). When I arrived, it was a nice-sized swarm that was positioned perfectly on a shrub off of their front porch. While talking with Pat and Andy, I commented that it was not a huge swarm, but a nice one none-the-less. Then came the drum roll, to which they responded ‘If you think that one is nice, you should have been here last week!‘ Heh. Hard words for a beekeeper to hear, but sort of funny.

Fortunately, they had taken a picture of the primary swarm, with the old queen. The real benefit to me was knowing that I had a virgin queen in this swarm, which has to be checked a little differently (it mainly means that I definitely want to give them a couple of weeks to get going and then I have to make absolutely certain that I have a mated queen that is showing signs of a solid mating.) Either way, it’s great news as it represents an influx of genes into my queen mating area. I actually used the hive to start a new outyard about a mile from my main queen-mating yard. I hope to add at least two more hives (with more new genes) to the yard over the next couple of months. This hive will be called the ‘Chesterfield Hive’ going forward!

The neighbor had actually located the main hive, well up in a nearby tree. The weather has been so great that they issued two swarms (and maybe more to come.) More signs that the year is getting off to a ‘charged up’ start!