SWARM!

Last night we looked out the window and saw that Peter's bees had swarmed.

Bees swarm for a variety of reasons, from not liking their hive, to being so successful that there is no longer room for all the bees.  I am confident that in our case (particularly because the hive is still full) there are too many bees. 

When bees swarm they lay queen cells (so they leave behind a queen) and then half of the workers and the original queen take off and land in a ball on a branch. 

As you can see there are thousands of bees sitting on this branch.  They hold onto one another and protect the queen.  A swarm will stay on the branch for between a few hours and a few days.  Ours was not on there very long before we noticed (we had been working in the yard a few hours before).  Swarms can be as small as a grapefruit or as large as a watermelon, ours was larger than most watermelons.  This means that it is likely that this swarm has over 50,000 bees. 

I cut this branch down and Peter shook the bees into our extra hive box.  After putting them in we made the sugar syrup and feed them.  He now needs to go get an extra top and bottom as well as a new queen extruder.  This should allow us to keep 2 hives.  Unfortunately our new hive might not last.  There is an old bee keepings saying:

A swarm in May is worth a load of hay

A swarm in June is worth a silver spoon

A swarm in July ain't worth a fly

 

This is because in May the drones may not be fully developed when they fertilize the queen the eggs may not be able to survive the next winter.  If the hive swarms too late they will not have time to build up enough honey for the winter.  So we will have to wait and see if our new queen can make the hive work. 

 

Unfortunately this makes it unlikely we will get a spring honey harvest, as the honey is now needed for two different hives.