This year saw the first good weather for bees in four years. The unusually warm weather, from the middle of March to now, has meant that dry conditions and the abundance of forage have produced an early start to the bee season. Recent reports from various Islington beekeepers indicate that swarming will occur in the last two weeks of May this year, a whole month earlier than usual.
There is nothing to fear when a swarm happens, as it is just the old queen taking half her original troops to a new location so that she has left a well-run home for her daughter to start the next generation of bees. Beekeepers can tell the hive is ready to swarm when they see peanut shaped cells hanging from the bottom of a frame of eggs. The Queen bee will mark these cells with a special pheromone to let her worker bees know that they must continually feed these cells exclusively with Royal Jelly (RJ), a milky white liquid. Normal worker cells are only fed RJ for the first 2-3 days then their diet is restricted to honey and pollen. A queen egg only takes 15 days to hatch from the time it is laid and the first queen to emerge will kill all the other queen pupae before they have hatched to eliminate any competition.
Within a few days, the old queen will secrete a pheromone to signal to the workers that they have to swarm from the hive. Many of the workers will gorge themselves on honey supplies but the queen is actually starved during this time so she stops laying eggs and is slim enough for the swarming flight. The swarm will usually leave the hive when the weather is warm and head for a tree close by. Seeing the swarm leave can be a scary event for those who do not know what is happening. The bees fly in a formation, often circular, until they decide on a suitable resting place. They are least likely to sting during this time, as many of them are so full of honey that they cannot bend their abdomens to sting anyway.
Most of the swarm honey bees will stay at the resting place and cluster round the queen whilst the scout bees search for a suitable permanent new address. This has to be a space that is large enough to accommodate a full colony of around 50,000 bees, and it can be inside a tree hollow or any space the bees think will not be invaded by rain or predators, such as wasps. Often it is in some part of a house or close to where humans live. People would normally be intimidated by large amounts of bees residing close to their home but they should never attack the nest as the bees will get angry and sting them.
If you see a swarm it is best to contact a local beekeeping organization, such as Freightliner’s Farm or Highbury Builders, and let them know the details of where the swarm is, how accessible it is, is there a ladder nearby that can be borrowed etc. We have collected swarms in unusual places, such as a postbox, a dog kennel and a bird box, but the bees don’t care as long as the space is big and dry.
Once at the site, the beekeeper will try and place a box under the main swarm cluster and lay a white sheet on the ground beneath the box then quickly tap the tree branch so the main cluster falls straight into the box. It is hoped the queen drops in the box first time because if she does not then the swarm can depart if she decides to fly away instead. If the queen does drop in the box then what happens next is one of nature’s great wonders.
The box is turned upside down then propped up at the front by a stick to allow flying bees access. The bees inside the box turn their bottoms to the outside and start fanning their wings so that the queen’s pheromones drift outside. This sends a signal to the bees outside the hive that the queen is now inside the box and they start to land and march up the white sheet to the box, which they now regard as their new home. Watching this display is like something out of a cartoon but it does actually happen. After a few hours the beekeeper returns to seal the box and remove the bees. They will then put the swarm into a waiting freshly prepared hive, so they now have two colonies instead of one. It is this swarming cycle that has ensured that honey bees have survived for 100 million years, much longer than the dinosaurs or mankind.
Liam Devany, Highbury Builders Collective