First of all, the chances are very high that the colony will swarm if you don’t break the swarm cells down.
Secondly, it’s hard to do a 2 way split in order to remove a colony’s urge to swarm. Once a colony decides it wants to swarm, it is almost locked into that mode. The only way to unlock it is to trick the colony into thinking it has already swarmed.
Finally, when a colony wants to swarm, it doesn’t kill the old queen, on account that the old queen leaves with the swarm. That should happen before the first virgin queen emerges, then it’s the virgin queens that fight it out to the death, unless they leave with caste swarms.
Note, it’s worth baring in mind that swarming is how bees reproduce. The urge to reproduce is a powerful force, & it’s what makes the world go round, figuratively speaking.
Spring is a good time for a colony to swarm, on account that the swarms have the rest of the season to build up in. The old hive included.
So the old and new hive is doing well so far. However, when I can home today some of my bees did swarm to a tree next to my hive, the good news is I was able to get them back into an empty brood box I had.
I was able to cut the branch off they were hanging off and the bees did not take off they just stayed in a ball. Which is pretty cool thing to see!! I shook them into a brood box with frames.
Now what to do? I placed the brood box off to the side.
Do I move them to their permanent home now or wait?
Hi Michael, that’s a beautiful swarm. As previously mentioned, I always give a captured swarm a frame of mostly open brood, which in the majority of cases holds the bees to the capture box. To be a 100% sure that the bees will stay in the box, move it to a new location for a couple of weeks. Far enough away so that the scouts are in unfamiliar territory.
Another thing that I do is avoid, where possible shaking a swarm of bees. With that branch, I would have placed it on top of the frames, with the frame of brood in the middle. The bees will immediately move onto the brood & start caring for it.
A newby question on swarming, if you took Mike-s’s swarm from the tree & placed it back on the original hive, on top of the open super, for example, would they take or re-swarm?
Very likely swarm again. Plus you would need to do a newspaper merge. I wouldn’t do that. Rehouse them in a new hive as soon as you can, preferably same day.
Hi Jeff,
Thanks for you info, and advice it is always helpful. They were coming in and out of the brood box. I used what I had available which were pre-wax deep brewed frames.
The bees are about 3-4 feet away from the tree I got them from. Should I move them further away?
Also, after I finish cutting my lawn this evening, I want to have a look at my original bee hive which is the one that I split. I noticed the bees were balled up on the landing board. When I looked closer, to my surprise I look like a new queen, was on the landing board, and they were cleaning her. Any idea why she would be outside of the hive?
Hi Mike, it looks like you missed my points. My points being that open brood will hold a swarm to a hive, much better than empty frames. The reason being that open brood needs to be attended to by nurse bees. Therefore in the majority of cases, as I found out, the bees will stay put. The other point is taking the hive far enough away, like double what you perceive the bees foraging range is. That way the scouts that are looking for a new home will be outside of any hollows that they may have found before you caught the swarm.
Swarm scouts can be very persuasive, meaning they can lure a swarm from whatever hive we put them into, in favor of what the scouts perceive to be a better home. It’s easy for a colony to abandon a hive while it has no brood to tie them down.
Another point to bare in mind is that a swarm only has one chance to get it right. Wherever they settle has to do them before they commit themselves to building a hive of comb, brood etc.
Hi All,
Unfortunately, I do not have any open brood unless I look in my old hive to see if there’s one. But I took some blood frames about 3 weeks ago when I did the split.
I will check and take another one and put it in the new hive.
