Yesterday we were camping and when we came back our neighbors commented that we had a huge swarm of bees near our hive and above our pool. They were more fascinated than anything and some of the bees relocated to a chimney. Meanwhile, I run over to check the hive and it seems like a flurry of activity is still going on while the drones are getting kicked out. I haven’t opened my boxes yet but I am asking here because I don’t know what to do even when I do. Ha.
Should I add another brood box below the super (honey is being made and stored) to provide more room?
Should I add a couple empty frames instead if I find the queen?
Is swarming just a natural process and I should just allow it to happen?
Should I harvest some honey from the drawn frames in the brood box to make room?
inspect your colony and look for queen cells, if the swarm left your colony it is more likely you queen has gone. However they can still swarm with the 1st virgin queen if there are more than 1 swarm cells. What I usually do is split the hive into 2 that way you have a good chance of one / two queens getting matted. If you don’t need another hive you can always merge / sell / give away the unwanted colony.
If you do find a queen perform an artificial swarm control, that is if your colony has queen cells.
If you allow swarming you will not get as much honey, to get honey and to make the bees think they have swarmed you take the brood box and place in a new hive location and then put a new brood box with frame in the old place. Find queen with a brood frame that has no queen cells and place that in the old location. The flying bees will vacate and come back to it’s original location. You could add a frame that has emerging brood so the queen would have a frame to lay on.
I inspected the hive and it is very abundant and doesn’t appear as though I have lost any of the colony - so I am now confused as to why it would swarm and regather in the original box?
I still have so much trouble locating the queen
Thank you for your help - I am still a little lost, but happy they are still “home”
It’s hard to believe how many bees are still left after a swarm with a big colony, so it’s quite possible that the swarm you saw is gone. Another possibility is that they were doing a practice swarm, which is exactly what it sounds like. So act fast in the morning as @Paras explained because they definitely will be gone by mid morning!
