PRACTICAL BEEKEEPING How to catch a swarm

How to catch a swarm

When a honey bee colony has fully occupied its nesting space and is capable of reproducing, it will swarm. This means that a good proportion of the bee population, including the current queen, will leave their nest in search of a new nesting place.

This happens only at specific times of year – here in UK the swarming season is from late April to June. In our temperate climate, this gives the swarm enough time to build a new nest and store enough honey to survive the following winter. Later swarms will have less chance of survival.

Left behind in the original hive are 25-50% of the workforce and capped queen cells from which will hatch one or more virgin queens. After a mating flight, one of these will become the existing colony’s new queen, inheriting the existing nest. Swarming therefore creates a break in the egg laying and brood rearing cycle, which usefully disrupts the life cycle of brood diseases and predators like the Varroa mite.

Bees for Development’s Patron, Professor Tom Seeley has described in his marvellous book Honey Bee Democracy*, how bees reach consensus on the merits of various potential new nesting locations. The debate takes place with sophisticated behaviour to process the data brought back to the colony by scout bees, who for days or weeks have been out researching potential new nesting places. Each bee involved in this process may be likened to one neurone within a mammal’s brain, contributing data to inform the superorganism’s decision.

When it is ready to go, the swarm will leave the existing colony – here in UK this is usually around midday. The swarm does not go straight from its existing home to the new one, but will settle initially nearby, typically on a tree branch or in a bush. After the tumultuous event of leaving home, this settling gives a chance for the swarm, consisting of around 15,000 bees, to coalesce and decide on their final location - based on last minute feedback from scout bees. It could be that several swarms have chosen the same ideal spot as their new nest site, and no doubt swarms have to readjust their plans if another beats them to it! The new dwelling place, according to Tom Seeley’s research, will rarely be less than 300 metres from the old one – and can be easily 3,000 metres or more. Imagine the logistics involved in organising 15,000 insects to stop work, fill up on honey, leave their home and fly to the new one - this is what the swarm achieves!

Intermediate location

It is when it settles in its intermediate location that the beekeeper has the opportunity to catch the swarm, because once the swarm has entered its final location it will probably be difficult to extract from the cavity it has chosen.

How to do it

Housing a swarm is not only the best way to gain bees, because your bees will be local and healthy, it is also definitely the most fun way too. And depending on the situation, catching a swarm can be very easy.

Equipment needed

When you get the call, you must be ready to go immediately and collect the swarm. You need:

• A temporary container for the swarm. This can be a cardboard box, a large, tightly woven basket, a woven straw bee hive (known as a skep in the UK), a small nucleus hive, or catcher box.

• A smoker

• A bee brush (a large, soft brush used to gently brush bees to where you want them) • Secateurs or a saw

• A large cloth sheet, around 2m by 2m

• Some twine or rope

• Veil and beekeeping overalls – these are most important – not so much because you need them, more to give the onlookers confidence that you are a professional! [You may not need the smoker or the bee brush – these are just in case things do not go to plan.]

In the ideal situation, the swarm is hanging from a branch within easy reach. You apply one confident thump to the branch, and all the bees fall into the container placed immediately underneath the swarm. Or you cut the branch and capture everything in the box. You now quickly encase the container in the sheet and tie it, so not one bee escapes.

If you captured most of the bees, the chances are that the queen is among them. Once the queen is in the container, all the remaining workers will want to join her. If there are still flying bees, spread the sheet on the ground and place the inverted container on it, with a small wedge to enable the flying bees to enter. Workers will stand at this entrance with their rear ends in the air, fanning Nasanov orientation pheromone into the air to signal the new location.

The bees will cluster to the inside top of the container, and to each other, in a clump. This is where a straw skep is ideal, as bees can easily cling to the straw. If your container is a cardboard box, close the lid, ensuring a small gap for the remainder of the bees to get inside.

If you wait until sunset – you can be sure that almost every bee from the swarm will be in the container. Now you can enclose the container in the cloth sheet and take it home. The swarm can be safely kept in a cool and quiet place overnight, ready for re-homing in your empty hive next day. Indeed, this calm overnight rest is ideal for everyone concerned – the bees and you! This gives you time to prepare the new hive where you plan to keep the hives.

Best way to begin beekeeping

This is absolutely the very best way to begin beekeeping. This is contrary to what you might read in some out-of-date text books – which used to state that swarms are sources of disease. A swarm is like a miniature honey bee colony – swarming is one of the self-cleaning behaviours of the honey bee colony and, like a new born baby, is a small, fresh and healthy start to a new life.

How to find a swarm?

You need to put the word out that you are looking for a swarm – let your friends know, and if you have joined a local beekeepers’ club, they will add you to their list of people waiting for swarms. Social media can be a good source of swarm news - although be aware that many alleged honey bee swarms are wasps and other wrongly identified insect species!

It is not usual practice to pay for a honey bee swarm: it is a wonderful gift. Once you are a beekeeper yourself, it will become your turn to pass on this gift to other beginners.

Other possible ways to gain bees are to buy a nucleus colony, or an established colony from a beekeeper living locally to you. What you absolutely must get, and be assured of, are local bees. Never think of buying bees from the internet or of distant or unknown provenance. The best bees for your area are bees that have evolved in your area - do not believe anything that you read about bees from somewhere else being somehow ‘better’ – this is nonsense. Although they will be living in your hive, the bees are still living as if in the wild, and local bees are best adapted to prevailing conditions: that is forage available through the year, weather conditions, climate, pests and predators.

Take the swarm to your new hive, where you have placed a large wooden board as a ramp up to the entrance. Upturn the container, untie the sheet and allow the swarm to spread over the board. The bees will be in a clump inside the container, clinging together and to the inside ceiling of the skep. With a single and firm movement, shake all the bees out of the container and on to the sheet on the wooden ramp. The bees will begin to walk and then run up the ramp, you may even spot the queen amongst them, and into the new hive: all will be inside within 30 minutes or so. A soon as the queen is inside, workers will begin fanning pheromone to tell everyone that this is the new home.

Of course, there are many variations on this ideal theme, and after a few years, every beekeeper has many good stories of swarms they caught, and those that got away!

Most swarms that settle high in trees, as this one did, probably go unnoticed

Social benefit

Helping neighbours when swarms arrive in gardens, and coming to the rescue when they arrive in public spaces is a wonderful way for beekeepers to teach about bees and foster goodwill. In addition to becoming a local hero, your neighbours will believe you are a real bee-whisperer when you adeptly catch the swarm!

SWARM

An Eritrean swarm-catcher counts his cash – in some places it is customary to pay for swarms

Safety

Bees in a swarm have no brood or honey to defend, and are therefore not in ‘defence mode’, and you are unlikely to be stung. However there are no firm rules in beekeeping, and stings do happen – maybe when bees accidently get stuck in your hair, or trapped in clothing. Safety in accessing the swarm is also important – do you need a ladder, and someone to hold it? Do you need permission for access from the resident or business? I always remember going to help someone who was terrified by a swarm that had arrived in their rose garden. I was delighted to find an easy swarm – I cut the small branch where they had settled and managed to capture every bee – only for the garden’s owner to turn from terrified to furious – that I had damaged their rose bush….

* Tom Seeley’s marvellous books Following the wild bees, Honey bee Democracy and The lives of bees are available from our webstore: www.shop.beesfordevelopment.org

NEWS

GHANA

In March Robert and Stephen from Bees for Development Ghana were invited by one of the cashew farmers who work in collaboration with BfD Ghana to go and harvest as he had seen honey dripping from one of his buckets!

THE QUEEN: WHEN MUSIC SAVES THE PLANET

A song to save the bees, The Queen is the first solo work by Max Casacci available streaming on all digital platforms. A baroque musical composition extracted, for the melodic part, from buzzes and sounds of bees and, for the rhythmic part, from bee hives and beekeeping tools. The protagonist is the queen bee, whose sampled sound is transformed into an imaginary oboe, while the baroque style describes, in her honour, the “monarchical” structure of the hive. The Queen stands by bees and farmers supporting the European Citizens Initiative (reported in BfDJ 134). If a million signatures are reached, the EU Commission will be forced to take a stand and issue an official statement, and the EU Parliament hold a public hearing on the issue.