Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Bee swarm

There's three kinds of honeybees. Workers, drones and queens. A healthy hive will have approx 80,000 bees. The worker bees work like Hell, are all females, and they perform a variety of jobs beginning immediately after hatching until they fall out of the sky going to or from the hive carrying nectar, water and usually pollen. The drones are all males, they do no work and wait around for the warm when one and only one of them will mate with a new queen. When the hive gets above 80,000 individuals they will likely swarm. A number of other circumstances will bring on a swarm but that is usually the reason and it's usually in Spring. At some point the workers will decide by some method to create new queen. they will construct a special cell in which the existing queen will lay an egg, they then feed the larvae "royal jelly" which is a specialized type of bee vomit and the larvae grows into a queen. When she is ready she and her attendants (roughly 1/4 to 1/2 of the existing hive) will leave the hive and fly up into the air where one of the drones will get lucky. The swarm then finds a suitable new home and begins setting up housekeeping. One of the first orders of business is usually to drive all of the drones out of the hive where they perish.

There is only one queen per hive and as a queen becomes unproductive another queen will be raised and the two will fight to the death. The queen has the ability to determine the sex of the egg she lays. From one mating she will have her entire lifetime of eggs fertilized.

Worker bees suck up the nectar from flowers and fly back to the hive, as they fly they metabolize some sugars in the nectar and their little bodies use some of the water out of it. Upon arriving back at the hive she then regurgitates the nectar into the mouth of another bee. that bee then removes a bit more water form the nectar. This process recurs numerous times until all of the water is out of the nectar. It is then regurgitated one last time into a cell and of course many other bees are doing likewise. We call this bee vomit "Honey".

As rick pointed out, when swarming the bees are really very docile and can be picked up with bare hands. They do most of the things they do on phermonal responses and Swarming is sex, so they are nice and friendly then.

This is really the very short version and I'm sure I've left a lot of things out.

Alan

We used to combine swarms by killing all but one queen then putting the hives containing the separate swarms together with two sheets of news paper between them. By the time they chewed through the newspaper they had gotten used to each other and would then have a stronger hive of bees.

Good beekeepers can recognize when a hive is going to swarm and go in and find the new queen cell. He can then kill the old queen or if the hive is a gentle, productive hive and he has some feral hives he's caught of questionable origin he can kill their queen and give the new cell to the swarm hives. Much of the time bees preparing to swarm will begin raising several new queens. If you kill the old queen and leave the new cell they will still have to swarm to mate but they normally go straight up and come back down to their hive.

Alan

All my bee knowledge is word of mouth from the old beekeeper who taught me. I ain't got no book larnin in it no way so I'd imagine some of my "knowledge" might be a bit off, but it's all I got.

Alan

Spring splits can help too.

Yep, then you can add your feral swarms to your splits.

Alan

Crossing my fingers.

I am envious of you guys with long seasons. It is still to cool to medicate and you are putting on supers.

Interesting stuff, thanks.

The other reason they don't often sting when swarming is that a bee sting kills the bee and those swarming usually carry a belly full of honey to feed the swarm until they can start producing. The bees know they need all of that honey to last through so they will usually not sting even if the individual is physically threatened, for them it is a case of survival of the hive or in this case the swarm that comes first so they do what is needed to give the hive/swarm the best chance of survival.

At least that is what I was told.

I'd like to get a couple of hives, we have huge rosemary bushes all around the yard, they each have been having hundreds of bees on the loaded flowers. The peach, cherry, nectarine, and apple trees have incredibly solid flowers on them as well. I figure if we have the flowers feeding tons of bees we might as well have our own bees.

Interesting posts.

Growing up we tried some really dark honey from hives pollinating tomatoes, it wasn't really very good, not horrible but not the best honey I've ever had.

They don not sting much when swarming because the get a belly full before they swarm. A bee with a belly full of honey is just about the happiest, most mellow, and easiest to get along with creature on earth.

Try honey from some of the seed crops like carrot or onion. Almond honey is another gourmet honey you will never forget.

I got to looking at some hive kits online. I had forgotten how much money it took for me to get into this the first time. My woodworking skills have improved a little in the last 25 years. Maybe I'll try my hand at making a couple of hives. Shouldn't be much of a deal. I made a bird feeder last week!

or maybe I'll just buy them. Anybody got any suggestions as to the best supply houses?

Alan

That one will do. Also check for local beekeeping supply houses. They are lots of them around here and you can save a bundle on shipping.

All the cool kids use it!

Do you have others Scott?

I've done business with Dadant, Walter T. Kelley, and Mann Lake. I've been satisfied with all of them. Some offer free shipping with $100.00 orders, and all will ship free certain times of the year.

I'm fortunate to have a local beekeeper who also owns a cabinet shop. He builds high quality hive bodies, frames, and other woodwork for beekeepers at really reasonable prices.

Try these:

Mann Lake

Ruhl Bee Supply

Western Bee Supply

Well, I guess I know what I'll be reading for the rest of the night. Thanks.

Alan