I came outside the other day and realised one of my hives had swarmed. They were high in a tree about 30m from the hive. Too high for me to do anything. The next day while I was out they disappeared. So I did an inspection and strangely the hive was chockablock. I took a split a few months back and the parent hive was stronger than the split. But they both grew and both look like nothing has happened. So my question is this - can a split return to the hive? It was very inclement weather and they had been in the rain all night. And just before they vanished it was about to pour again. If they haven’t returned I can’t imagine where this swarm came from. None of my neighbours have bees and I’m rurally located. In SE QLD can we expect a hive to swarm more than once in a season? I thought by taking a split they would be ok until next year.
Hi Geoff, I’ve only heard of practice swarms, in that the swarm returns only to leave the following day.
I’m thinking that if a swarm returned permanently, they’d have to quickly destroy all the queen cells they produced. With that in mind, it would be advisable to do a brood check, just to see what’s going on.
We can expect a hive to swarm more than once in a season, especially here on the Sunny Coast. Nothing is certain, so therefore we should keep our guard up.
All colonies are different. Some colonies can outperform other colonies by 2 to 1. I always use the gap in my roofs as a guide. When the gap in the roof starts filling up with bees, I split, regardless of whether I previously split that colony that season.
I always try to encourage Flow owners to keep the crown hole open, so that a population explosion will be evident in the roof, while doing fortnightly checks.
As Jeff said its definitely worth checking your hives but remember that swarm could have come from anywhere not necessarily your hives.
Cheers
Rob.