The best laid plans of mice and men, or in this case beekeepers, often go awry. And when it comes to swarms, this year my bees have definitely had a mind of their own. I don’t entirely understand why they are having such a hard time sticking with the plan. I talk to them regularly about my expectations, based soundly on 9 years of experience and regular reading about honeybee biology, society and behavior. I even write the plans out for them in plan language in the form of farm stories, so they have something to refer to if there are any questions about what they should be doing. If you have had a chance to read earlier farm stories, you know that they were told that spring splits were done to prevent swarm preparations. They built swarm cells anyway. They were also told that May was swarm season. They continued to build swarm cells well into June and even some in July. And just when I thought I had finally got them convinced that enough was enough, guess what they decided to do today? That’s right…swarm!
It is actually just serendipity and Gary’s sharp eyes that brought their misbehaving to my attention. If I hadn’t gotten distracted and forgotten to mow a path in the field after the sun dried it out today so that we could move the goat’s electric fence tomorrow, I would not have been out there this evening. And if I hadn’t decided to mow the path for the fence move next week as well as the one for tomorrow, I would not have gotten the riding mower stuck. And if I had not gotten the riding mower stuck, Gary would not have brought out the big tractor to pull me out. And if he had not brought the big tractor out, he would not have seen this is a tree.
Now, Gary is not a beekeeper, but unlike the bees, I have trained him well, because right after he said “What is that?” and pointed to the tree, he answered his own question with “Isn’t that a huge swarm?” And not only was he right about it being a swarm, but it was huge! That first picture doesn’t do it justice for recognizing the number of bees in that tree, so but this shot sure does.
Situated only about 20 feet from my hives, there is little doubt that these bees originated there, and were just hanging out on the tree, while they decided where they were going to move to next. With all these bees in the swarm, I will probably be able to tell pretty quickly which hive them came from when I do my hive inspections, as they obviously significantly reduced that hive’s population! I had taken down most of my swarm traps (as the bees had been told, it is not swarm season any more!) so if Gary hadn’t spotted them, they would have moved on to some place where I would have never seen them again, But, now I had the opportunity to redirect their escape plan. With Gary holding the end of the branch to keep it from falling, I cut off the branch they had gathered on and we set it right on top of a box with a couple of frames in it, including one with very old honeycomb. The smell of old comb is very attractive to bees, especially the queen, and the swarm immediately started to move off the branch and on to the old comb.
After a significant number of bees had walked down on to the old comb, I brushed and shook the rest of bees from the branch into the box. If I got the queen in there with them, which I think I did, they should stay put. Well, that is the expectation anyway. At this point, I am not sure I should count on that. But nothing more to do tonight. Tomorrow will tell if they have decided to stick to the plan this time. If they do, I will move them into a hive. That will be my very last hive set up, so after this they REALLY do need to give up on their swarm planning!