Bee Knowledgeable Answers: Swarming

What do you think a swarm of bees are? Why does a colony swarm?

Swarming is a natural way for bees to split their colony and reproduce.  When a colony of bees gets too large for its hive, usually in Spring to early Summer, the colony will decide to swarm. The workers will start rearing new queens in queen cells. The old queen will leave the hive behind, taking some drones and half her workers with her. Swarms can have 1500 to 30,000 bees!

Queens lay thousands of eggs in a day and colonies can build to greater and greater numbers very quickly when lots of food sources are available. The bees can reach a point that the hive is too crowded. It becomes harder for the workers to maintain the proper hive temperature. The bees will decide it is time to swarm.

The swarm leaves the hive and begins searching for a new home. Swarms will temporarily rest in the strangest of places. They’ll hang from a tree or hang off the back of a lounge chair, or just about anywhere.  While the swarm is resting, scout bees will venture out to search for a new home. The swarm may move again in a few hours or a few days, but it will keep moving until the bees have found the right place.

Swarms of bees are less likely to sting than established colonies. A swarm has no brood or stores of food yet to defend. Bees sting to defend their homes, their babies, their food, and each other. Left alone, a swarm shouldn’t bother anyone.

Eventually the scout bees will return successful and tell the swarm where the new possible is located by doing the waggle dance. The swarm then goes and inspects the new hive location. The swarm will decide whether the location is suitable or not. If it is not, they will keep traveling and looking. If the location is right for a good hive, the bees will start emitting a “home pheromone” which has a lemony smell.

Immediately worker bees will start cleaning and building new comb. They will even ‘measure’ the space by forming chains of bees from one side of the space to the other. The swarm has settled into their new home and is now considered a colony with a hive of their own.

What has happened to the original hive, you ask. They have no queen anymore and half their workers have left! Well, the worker bees left behind will move eggs into larger than normal sized cells, called queen cells. They look very much like a peanut. When that egg hatches, it will be fed only a very special diet of royal jelly. Royal jelly is a special substance made only by the nurse bees who take care of the brood, or baby bees.

Being fed only royal jelly during her development, the larva will pupate and a queen bee will hatch. Usually the bees have moved several eggs into queen cells and so have several queens developing at once.

The queen that hatches first will find the other queen cells and sting the other queens through the walls of their cells. If more than one queen bee hatches at the same time, the queens will fight to the death. The strongest queen will survive to be the mother of the colony.

So swarming is the way a bee colony makes a brand new bee colony. It is a completely natural process. Healthy colonies can even swarm several times during a season.

If you see a swarm, it is best to just leave it alone. It will move on, either within hours or a few days. Otherwise, call a local beekeeper to remove and relocate it.