Swarming (honeybee)
From Freepedia
New honeybee colonies are formed when queen bees leave the colony with a large group of worker bees, a process called swarming. The first or prime swarm generally goes with the old queen. As soon as the swarm is established as a new colony, the bees raise a new queen, or sometimes a replacement virgin queen is already present in the swarm. Afterswarms are usually smaller and are accompanied by one or more virgin queens. Sometimes a beehive will swarm in succession until it is almost totally depleted of workers.
Image:Beekeper collecting swarm.jpg
Swarms of bees sometimes frighten people, though they are usually not aggressive at this stage of their life cycle. Most swarms will move on and find a suitable nesting location in a day or two. Beekeepers are sometimes called to capture swarms.
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Swarm Management
During the first year of a queen's life the colony has little incentive to swarm, unless the hive is very crowded. During her second spring, however, she seems to be programmed to swarm. Without beekeeper "swarm management" in the second year, the hive will cast a "prime swarm" and one to five "after swarms." The old queen will go with the prime swarm, and others will be accompanied by virgin queens.
Swarming is to the beekeeper what losing all of his calves is to a cattleman. The hive that cast the swarm is often so badly depleted that it will be unproductive for the entire season. For this reason, beekeepers try to anticipate swarming and assist the bees to reproduce in a more controlled fashion by "splitting hives" or making "nucs." This saves the "calves" and keeps the "cow" in condition to accomplish some work.
There are many methods for swarm control. Most methods simulate swarming to extinguish the swarming drive. One method of swarm control is to remove a frame of young brood. This frame is put in a hive box with empty drawn frames and foundation at the same location of the old hive. A honey super is added to the top of this hive topped by a crown board. The remaining hive box with the queen is inspected for queen cells. All queen cells are destroyed. This hive box, which has most of the bees, is put on top of the crown board. Foraging bees will return to the lower box depleting the population of the upper box where the queen is. After a week to ten days both parts are inspected again and any subsequent queen cells destroyed. After another period of separation the swarming drive is extinguished and the hives can be re-combined.
Swarming location
When honeybees swarm from the hive they do not fly far at first. They may gather in a tree or on a branch only a few meters from the hive. There, they cluster about the queen and send scout bees out to find a final location. The swarm may fly for a kilometer or more to the scouted out location. When the swarm first forms a cluster it is relative easy to capture the swarm in a suitable box. There are also swarm traps with pheromone lures that can be used to attract swarms.
See also
- Africanized bee - a hybrid bee with characteristics unsuitable for beekeeping.
- Apiary - a yard where behives are kept
- Apitherapy - human therapy using bee venom
- Bee - a member of the family that includes ants, wasps, and termites
- Bee anatomy (mouth)
- Bee learning and communication
- Bee venom therapy - also called apitherapy
- Beehive - a housing for cavity-dwelling bees that allows inspection and honey removal
- Beekeeping - bees are kept for their products (principally honey), and their utility in pollenating crops
- Beekeeping leading practices - newer techniques of beekeeping
- Brood (honeybee) - the egg, larval, and pupal form of the bee and the comb in which they develop
- Buckfast hybrid bee - a productive bee suitable for damp and cloudy climes.
- Characteristics of common wasps and bees
- Deseret - the beehive and its symbolism to the Church of Later-Day Saints (Mormons)
- Drone bee - the male bee
- Diseases of the honeybee
- Honeybee - bees particularly suitable for use in apiculture
- Honeybee life cycle - the physical stages in the development of a mature bee starting from the egg
- Laying worker bee - this worker will produce only drone bees
- Langstroth_hive - commonly seen in developed countries as stacks of white boxes at the edges of fields and orchards
- List of honeybee races
- Pesticide toxicity to bees
- Piping queen - queens will make audible sounds at certain times
- Swarming - the means by which bee colonies propagate
- Supercedure - replacement of a reigning queen by her workers
- Queen bee - a single egg laying bee capable of producing workers, drones, and queens
- Top-bar hive - an alternative to the Langsthroth box hive, with some advantages for casual beekeeping
- Virgin queen - A queen that has not yet bred with drones
- Western honeybee European honeybees
- Worker bee - the many tasks performed by this class of bee during her short lifetime and her specialized single-use stinger
External links
For more information on the bio-chemical factors that govern swarming, see apis newsletter July 2003.
