A Huge Swarm Turning Up

We made a video of a 7 day update & 14 day update combined. I’m pleased to say that the queen is laying well & looking fantastic.


cheers!!!

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Sometimes a swarm moves into an empty hive next door (a few inches) sometimes they move 7 miles down the road. The most common distance is 1/4 mile (400 meters).

Such a difference in the Queen, all plump…lovely to see.

Thanks, you probably read where another swarm moved into my yard 9 days later. Two days ago I had to destroy a colony that moved into a house wall less than a kilometer away. A cockroach bomb did the trick.

Thank you Kirsten. I killed 3 queens last week that looked like that. That was hard to do.

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I can imagine…you couldn’t use them?

I put out 3 swarm traps the other day. Two of them on my property & 1 on the neighbours. The two that are here I’ve been observing. An hour after I put them out a couple of bees turned up (about 2pm), 30 mins later there were approx. 50 or more investigating. This number fluctuated to almost double & below for next 3 hours, then they left, except for a few which stayed. (I was standing on the balcony below 1 of hives, which is on the roof, & I couldn’t work out if it was my tinnitus, or there were actually bees humming, so I went up to look.) The last couple of days the same has happened from about 9am. I know that the bees coming to one of the traps are from a very strong feral colony in one of my trees. I just think it’s interesting, because as @JeffH mentioned earlier, I assumed that once they’d swarmed they sent off scouts for their permanent residence. However I suppose it makes sense that there may be scouting over longer periods of time. This colony didn’t swarm last year, (all the others did at least once) & they became so large in number that the front of the box they took over was about 15-20cm deep with bees until it got very cold. They are again the strongest in number & that appears to increase noticeably by the day, over the last week.
I’m going to keep watching, see what happens, and fingers crossed they decide they like my trap :slight_smile:

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I understand that up Jeffa way the temperatures warmer but down in Vic, coming out of winter, is it normal to have colonies swarming?

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Hi Kirsten, no I couldn’t use them, they were about 3 stories off the ground on the highest corner of a pole home. You’d have to set up a bee escape to get them out, plus I’m inundated with my own bees, they are multiplying sooo quick. You inspect a hive one day & everything looks fine, no need for any swarm control. You take a look in 5 days time & it’s bursting at the seams. It all happens when a few fully sealed frames of brood (like the ones in my recent split video) start hatching. You know you could have over 4 thousand bees per frame hatching out within a week. With 4 or 5 frames like that in a hive, that’s a boost of 16-20 thousand bees.

I knocked back a big swarm yesterday, 20 minutes drive away, there was no way I could possibly pick it up. Good luck with your swarm lures. I’m off to the bees, bye.

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Hi Greg, it started here over a month ago, well before the end of winter. It starts here not long after the shortest day.

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I heard at my beekeepers supply last weekend that there have been this year. Many people preparing for early swarming. You could feel the change toward Spring about 2-3 weeks ago, things warming up & lots of early flowering. Last few days have been warmer again. I don’t know that they will swarm this early ( as mentioned above one didn’t at all last year ) but am prepared if /when they do. I just think interesting behaviour? Am going to see if I can find any studies of pre swarming/swarming behaviours that might mention above.
Around here there are a lot of plants flowering with abundant pollen & nectar, there is one street where every step is accompanied by happy, busy & very loud humming of bees.

Didn’t realise they were from that colony, I get the working at that height conundrum. :wink:

Hi Kirsten, I just walked in from splitting this swarm. The work they have done since Saturday is incredible. I put fresh frames with foundation to replace the frame that collapsed as well as the frame with all drone comb. I put the frame that collapsed in another hive after I fixed it. I fed the drone comb, which only had honey in it to those two splits I did, one split was particularly low on honey. Anyway those 2 frames I put in to replace were fully built. The honey stores above all the brood was mostly full & capped. I’m taking the queen with 2 frames away in a nuc box. I’ll let this colony build emergency queen cells, then I’ll use one frame containing e.queens cells per nuc I intend to make up in a weeks time, at the same time leaving one for the colony to continue with.

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Here’s the second swarm that turned up 9 days later. Plus what I was talking about to @Kirsten_Redlich, the work that the first swarm has done since last Saturday. We got a better shot of the eggs after holding the frame in front of something dark. Take note of the beautiful geometry of the freshly built comb.


cheers

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Great video @JeffH and Wilma! Did you see any queen cells on your older swarm that you took 2 frames from? I didn’t spot any in your video, but the frames had a lot of bees on them. :blush: What will you do if they don’t make any queens?

Hi Dawn & thank you:), no I didn’t spot any queen cells yesterday, it was only the prior day that I removed the queen. It’s a bit early to start looking for them. They’ll start building emergency queen cells for sure, we can count on that happening. It depends on how many frames they build cells on as to how many splits I can put frames with queen cells into. I don’t intend cutting any cells out of frames. Whatever number of cells are on each frame is how many cells each split receives. I figure I can start doing splits for these frames after a week of removing the queen.

I can count on them making new queens, however if the new queen fails & there’s always a chance of that, I’ll just add another frame of brood, I might even have a frame available with queen cells underway from other splits down the track.

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can’t access the link? comes up page not found?

That’s brilliant Jeff! You’re not going to give that first queen away are you? She’s too lovely & her progeny too. :slight_smile:
Rob Owen (Bob’s Beekeeping) in Melbourne was saying that he’s found that a colony will often swarm to the same tree, prior to their finding their favoured permanent home. I’m hoping that the colonies here have heard of that practice too
:wink:
I’ll post a pic. tomorrow of the build up on my Pine tree colony. Thank you for the update too, as Wilma said it’s incredible the amount they can build.
Took Thursday off, as mentioned was windy, cold, & rain…

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Ah OK, somehow I thought it was the week before! :blush: Thanks for clarifying for my confuddled brain. :smile:

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Hi & thanks Kirsten, no I took the queen down to my main site so the bees wouldn’t return to the original hive. I don’t have any vacant spots down there now. I had about a dozen a month ago. I put the box on top of another hive. I’m only selling colonies with newly mated queens. I wasn’t going to advertise colonies for sale this year & only concentrate on getting my own up to full strength. Now I’m finding I had to, I had no choice.

I’m still keeping my fingers crossed for you. I think now you should only have one thing to prevent you from doing the transfer, rain:). Cold weather can chill the brood, however you may find that your better off not using much of their own brood anyway. Being spring time, they’ll readily build on fresh wax foundation. That way you’ll be able to keep your brood in good order after eventually taking their old comb out. I did that with the original black mountain brood. It’s currently sitting above a QX where the brood will hatch & the bees will replace it with honey. After extracting the honey, I’ll cut the comb out & rewire it to use fresh foundation.

I only used foundationless frames in the second swarm because I was running low on frames with foundation. Also a fresh swarm will primarily build worker comb in the early stages. I use foundationless in my observation hive because it’s a good visual display. Also the colony is always too weak in numbers to start building drone comb.

The link was correct, it appears they have removed/moved the content as I have found multiple references to the URL.

I found another source here
http://m.aesa.oxfordjournals.org/content/97/1/111.full.pdf

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