Swarm season is… April!?

In the grand scheme of things, I am a relatively small-scale beekeeper, aiming for an end of winter hive count of around 20 hives. That puts me somewhere between a “hobbyist” beekeeper (usually less than 20-30 hives) and a sideliner beekeeper (20 -30 up to around 100 hives, and making some money on the side, but with an alternate form of stable income), and a LONG way from a commercial beekeeper, some of whom manage 1000s of hive. I can’t imagine how the sideliners with 100 hives are managing, as the 20-30 hives that I care for throughout the honey season is plenty to keep me hopping, especially this time of year, and I don’t have another job!

Hives that come through winter well begin to grow quickly once the trees and flowers start to bloom. When the hives get large enough, they need to be divided to prevent half the bees from swarming, ie flying off in search of a new home. When a swarm first leaves the hive, they usually hang out close by, until they have identified a good place to live, and then they head for their new home. In my area of Michigan, May is “swarm season”. Knowledgeable beekeepers work to avoid swarming, both because if the bees succeed in leaving, we have lost part of our honey making and/or pollinating work force, but also because when bees swarm, there is a risk that they will move someplace they are not wanted, like into some part of our neighbor’s homes. The first week in May, I am usually gearing up for a couple of busy weeks in the yards, assessing colonies, and splitting the biggest of them, either for my use or to sell to others. While I am doing that, I make notes about all of them, including which colonies are most at risk to reach swarming size soon, as I lay out a plan for weekly inspections. Because I know May is busy in the bee yard, I try to avoid making other commitments. That allows me to be flexible and available for the work required to get my bees ready for a new honey season and to minimize swarming from my apiary.

Because of our very mild winter this year, my overwintered colonies were already booming by the beginning of April, well ahead of what I have seen in prior years. Because of that, I was anticipating that swarm season might start early, so, I can’t say I was totally shocked to get my first call from someone asking if I would be able to come pick up a swarm on April 26. But still, WOW! The week before had been too cold to get into my hives, so I was anxious to see what my bees were planning. However, I had some unbreakable commitments (it wasn’t May, after all), so despite my instinct to run right out and start looking in hives, I had to wait! While I waited, I got a text from a fellow beekeeper saying he was working his hives, and it looked like one had already swarmed and others were well on their way in preparations to swarm. I got more anxious! Then, commitments out of the way, it decided to rain. URGHHH! When a hive is preparing to swarm, they start making new queens, in special structures called queen cells. Sometime before the new queens emerge from their cells, the old queen leaves (swarms) with about half of the bees in the hive. When the old queen is prevented from leaving for some reason, the worker bees block the new queens from coming out of their queen cells. Queens waiting to emerge are said to make a special high pitch sound called piping. I was imagining baby queens piping away in queen cells, while the colony waited for appropriate weather to launch the old queen and her court. When the sun came out, was I going to have swarms hanging in trees all around my apiary, and then heading off into the wild blue yonder (hopefully not my neighbor’s walls or chimneys)?

When the weather finally allowed, I entered the largest of my bee yard, holding my breath and surveying all the nearby bushes and trees. No swarms in sight! But the first hive I went into had finished queen cells, and the next two were well on their way to the same. Suddenly, what was supposed to be an intense but reasonably paced two weeks in early May turned into a mad rush to get to every hive, and get splits made as needed. Four days of intense bee work later I have been through all of my 24 overwintered hives, at least half of which were actively engaged in making queens and getting ready to swarm. Amazingly, none had actually swarmed. Whew! At the end of those 4 days, my 24 hives have turned into 42 boxes of bees. YIKES! Fortunately some of those boxes will be sold, and some will be recombined once swarm season passes, hopefully getting me back down to 20-30 hives needing summer management! At least one upside of the past few crazy days is that I suddenly have a bit more free time for the rest of May!