Swarms and Splits

In my last post, we were holding our breath to see if spring had really arrived.  Update: it did arrive! 

The unseasonably warm weather made a swift end to winter and gave all of our hives (as well as ourselves) an unpredicted boost. For the first time ever, all of our hives survived the winter.  We were checking on the hives and had a hunch that we needed to get to splitting the hives, but it seemed too early.  It turns out the bees were quite ready to split. It was wonderful and, on Mother's Day, forced us to "level up" our beekeeping - in more ways than one!

We were finishing our family time together outside when our company noticed "the bees were really busy."  Mr. Bee and I saw that they were coming rapidly out of one of the hives and flying up and around...and away.  We could even hear a difference. This was a swarm.

Swarming is the honey bees' usual way to reproduce and make more colonies. Imagine a hive has survived winter.  The weather is warm, there is plenty of food available in nature, and the queen is laying eggs.  She lays hundreds and hundreds of eggs every day - sometimes 800 to 1000. After 21 days, the new set of bees emerge and start their work in the colony. The next day, the next 800 or so bees emerge, and this continues every day.  The hive is strong, building comb, collecting food, raising the young, and could be running out of space.  To keep the hive healthy and to continue the strong genetics, the bees make new queens.  When the first new queen hatches, the original queen leaves with about half of the bees to start their colony elsewhere.  This group and the activity itself is called the swarm, or swarming.

We said "goodbye" to our company, knowing in the back of our minds that half of one of our hives was leaving, too.  When everyone left, I walked back to the hives and tried to see if I could tell where the bees were headed...and there it was!

A swarm is quite amazing to witness in person.  These bees are hanging on to one branch and each other. There is a lot to be said about how they function in this moment, but we are still learning. They manage their temperature (and that of the queen), their weight distribution, their response to rain and wind, etc. 

It was a blessing that the swarm was on our property and that it wasn't too high up in the tree. Mr. Bee and our company had been refreshing our rope swings outside and we happened to have a ladder out, so we raced to suit up and try to catch the swarm.  It is a time-sensitive process since the bees, once they have made their clump, will send out scouts to look for a suitable place to establish the new colony. A swarm may stay minutes or hours, depending on how long it takes for the scouts to return and for the entire group to be ready to go. 

Mr. Bee removed the entire branch that the swarm was on and lowered it into a hive box that I had been holding in my arms. 

We got as many of those bees as we could and set them in in the boxes.  This is a brand new endeavor for us, and we were very much thrown into the learning process by having to "go for it." We are sure that this particular hive was very ready to swarm and may have swarmed successively by now (which means they had another queen hatch and many more bees leave).  A hive can continue to swarm, sometimes until there are no bees left in the original space.  Regardless, we totally did our best with the knowledge we had.

Knowing our other hives were likely in the same state of being ready to swarm, we took time the next day to split them and start moving them to their country home.  Here is what the hives looked like before the process:

Splitting is a beekeeper's way of mimicking a swarm while being able to keep all of the bees, now in two hives instead one. It is an essential beekeeping skill that we are only slightly experienced with.  We decided to find the queen in each remaining hive, which is a real task. She is one in more than 30,000 bees. We found the queens and put each into her own "new" hive along with lots of workers and brood comb in hopes that they will establish themselves into these new hives. 

When splitting or inspecting hives this time of year, a beekeeper will see queen cups and queen cells like the one in the photo below. It was accidentally opened and shows a queen larvae surrounded by royal jelly, which is the sole diet of a developing queen. When these cells are present, there are several strategies beekeepers use to split.  We chose ours and, again, went for it.

Here is a shot of how full the hives were. It is amazing to have such strong colonies after winter.

Since this post is already getting long for reading, I will spare you the photos and detailed descriptions of getting the split hives strapped on our trailer, setting them up, and then a week later transporting the remaining hives in Mr. Bee's back seat so that all of the bees are now in one place.

After the process, this is where things are at:

We have some very strong hives, the questionable swarm we caught, some solid splits, and some feeder boxes that will come off this weekend.  We have been finding ourselves reminiscing about Mr. T. and how happy he would have been to finally see the bees all make it through winter.  We miss him and his lovely property. At the same time, we are excited about and thankful for this new season and new location with Mr. and Mrs. A. It is lovely to have beekeeping as a family endeavor of ours and to now start to share the excitement for it with another family.

Here is the superb view that be bees have as they leave the hive to forage and make their way for this season: