Bees for Development Journal 111
PRACTICAL BEEKEEPING
GOOD BEEKEEPING PRACTICE
SWARMING IMPULSE & REPRODUCTION Wolfgang Ritter, CVUA-Freiburg, Am Moos Weihez, D 79108, Freiburg, Germany PHOTO © K NEUMANN
Keywords: colony development, nuclei, queen cell, Varroa The fifth in the series from Dr Wolfang Ritter offering advice for Good Beekeeping Practice to maintain healthy honey bees
Acting at the right time
The aim of all livings things is to reproduce and secure the continued existence of their species. Honey bee colonies multiply naturally by swarming. In the past this was used as a natural way of colony multiplication and the heathland beekeepers used to sit in front of their basket hives watching their swarming colony ready to catch the swarm in a bag fixed to the hive. Nowadays swarming is considered to be a loss of bees and honey. For good beekeeping practice it is necessary to know, understand and respect the context of swarming.
Soft control
Many small factors can influence the swarming impulse. These range from stimulating the construction impulse, cautiously extracting bees and combs, as well as drone brood rearing, through to timely honey extraction and a balanced space provision according to colony strength. Young queens have less tendency to swarm, but there is no guarantee that they will not do so. Also breeding offers chances. But this should never be exaggerated, because the swarming instinct is closely related to vitality and power of survival.
Nuclei situated to help the queen to find her way back after mating
Understanding the signs
The first visible signs of preparation for swarming are manifold. To begin with, brood rearing is usually reduced. Consequently, there are less bees gathering pollen and the bee bread (pollen) in the cells is covered with a glossy nectar coating for conservation. All construction activity is stopped, fresh drone brood is lacking, and honey is stored instead. At the entrance ‘lazy’ bees are crawling around, and food exchange does not take place there. Queen cell constructions appear on the combs, and their interior is polished by the bees. Once the cells contain eggs or if they are actually sealed, you can only care about the primary swarm – when the queen leaves the hive with a large number of workers. If you already hear some ‘tooting and croaking’ in the hive, it is too late and you can only try to avoid the after-swarm. Secondary swarms are led by several virgin female bees and as a result, these swarms are half the size of the primary swarm - and do not occur as often.
Less recommended
It is not bee-appropriate to suppress colony development early by extracting too many combs with bees or by expanding the brood space too much. Waiting and only cutting out queen cells is also not helpful to the colony and creates delay in its actual development. Radically cutting a queen’s wings only delays swarming by a few hours, and the queen usually pays with her life lost in swarming. An empty hive as a swarm catcher is only effective if it “smells like bees”. And used open hives are not acceptable because these bear the risk of spreading foulbrood.
Follow the swarm PHOTO © J SCHWENKEL
Immediately before swarming, usually around noon, the bees retire to their hive. A few minutes later, the swarm emerges. Now you can only hope that they settle initially nearby at a place not too high up: small fruit trees are an ideal initial location. The longer a swarm is on its way and the younger the queen, the higher it flies and settles down. When you catch a swarm from a place high up, you should first care for your health: this is more important than to lose a bee colony! The actual catching and lodging of the swarm is usually straightforward. You can handle swarms easily and without special protective clothing because bees only defend with their own life if they have built combs.
Nuclei and swarming impulse
Nowadays, it is difficult for most beekeepers to integrate multiplication by swarming into their management scheme, because of time constraints. In order to avoid swarming, the colony can be either divided into the parent colony with all the brood and a nucleus colony with all the flight bees, or create an interim nucleus. Depending on the management scheme, a controlled juvenescence and multiplication of the bee population
By extracting brood combs from colonies when forming nuclei, the parent colony at the same time loses Varroa mites 3
