Swarming is the most natural thing a honey bee colony does, and one of the most disruptive things it can do to a beekeeper’s season. This category covers swarm biology, prevention strategies, and the management techniques that actually work at different scales of operation — from a handful of hives in the garden to a larger commercial operation where time per colony is limited. It also covers the related topic of making increase: using the biology of swarming to produce new colonies deliberately, rather than losing bees over the fence.
Understanding why colonies swarm — and what the decision looks like from inside the hive — makes swarm management considerably less stressful. The posts here try to cover both the biology and the practicalities, including the queen rearing opportunities that swarm season presents and how to use splits and nucleus colonies as part of a planned management system rather than as a damage-limitation exercise.
As many say in the beekeeping world, ask ten people about something, and you’ll get eleven different answers. I don’t think that’s entirely true, but beekeeping is undoubtedly a ‘broad church.’ A common way to start beekeeping in the UK is to buy a nucleus colony; a small but perfectly formed colony of bees in … Read more
Many very experienced beekeepers in the UK advocate using the Demaree Method of swarm prevention for people with a small number of hives. George Demaree (1832–1915) from Kentucky first published his approach in an article in the American Bee Journal in 1892. I love the fact that a method devised thousands of miles away and … Read more
As I was thinking ahead to next spring and summer, and reflecting on seasons past, I decided to check my records to look at swarming. In the season just gone swarming kicked off much earlier than I’d seen before. I have detailed records going back to 2013, which isn’t that long really, but it’s better … Read more
I love science. I’ve even got a chemistry degree, but don’t ask me about it because that was over thirty years ago. As soon as I left university, I went to the City to do accountancy. It’s hard to deny the importance of science in our lives. The scientific method; the testing of a hypothesis … Read more
How to stop swarming? Answer: you can’t! At least not completely. However, beekeepers have to try to stop their bees swarming. If you lose swarms, you will not make as much honey as you could do. You can also catch swarms which is great fun. There’s a swarm coming I suspect that a wave of … Read more
At some point, some colonies will make swarm preparations, and if the beekeeper wishes to keep his or her bees, and hopefully the lovely honey they will make, he or she needs to do something about it pretty quickly. Once queen cells are found in the hive then the bees are no longer bluffing; they … Read more
The easiest way to understand how honeybees work is to think of the colony as the body of an individual, and therefore the bees themselves are more like cells which make up that body. It is the survival and prosperity of the colony that matters, not that of any individual bee, except the queen (she’s … Read more
How to prevent swarming? I previously wrote about some potential factors involved in the swarming of honey bees and why swarm prevention and control are so important for the beekeeper. The idea that we can prevent swarms is probably misguided; it is after all what bees are programmed to do, it is how they reproduce, … Read more