Gardening Charlotte

‘Free’ Bees

The calls have started to come in. People are seeing, maybe hearing first, little clouds of bees moving into their backyards or attaching themselves – to a deck, the side of a house or a vehicle bumper.

It’s honeybee swarming season in Missouri, a time when bee colonies ensure their survival by splitting. Usually the old queen leaves the mother hive with one third of the bees in that flying cloud, leaving a new daughter queen behind to keep the colony going.

To some beekeepers, swarms are “free” bees because they don’t have to pay for them. Most beekeepers start their apiaries by buying bees, either in small boxes, nucleus colonies or fully developed colonies. Depending on the size, cost can range from $100 to $500 per hive.

To answer someone’s call about a swarm, one should have a packed car and the ability to take off within minutes to the swarm location. Swarms may periodically move as they wait for scout bees to find a new home so there is no guarantee they will be where they were first spotted.

A swarm normally has enough food for about 5 days so the older the swarm, the crankier they can be. Before leaving their original home, the swarm has filled up with honey so they are quite docile to handle at first. As they run out of food and have no prospects for a home, they can get more difficult so I recommend always wearing  protective clothing.

Once collected and transported back to their new potential home location, swarms need to be fed sugar syrup to simulate nectar in nature and provided a frame of honey. They also need to be given a new home with extra room to grow. Even with the new digs and flight fuel, a swarm may leave so there is no guarantee that they will stay.

In addition to bees, swarms also have hitchikers: varroa mites, the ticks of the bee world, travel on flying bees. Small hive beetles fly along with bees, then use the stressful opportunity to expand their own numbers, sometimes chasing off the bees within a week.

The queen bee may also have to be replaced to ensure an ongoing supply of eggs to hatch into new bees. The old queen can be removed from the rest of the bees to see if they will raise a new queen, or a new queen can be introduced.

If the caught swarm makes it into fall, national figures indicate 40% of all caught swarms make it through their first winter. No one is quite sure why but it is one of the challenges of keeping a swarm going.

The adventure, however, is still part of the allure. Whether a box is strapped to a tree to attract a swarm as it flies by or someone has a bunch of bees hanging from the back lilac bush, catching a swarm is still a must do for every beekeeper. At least once.

Charlotte Ekker Wiggins is a beekeeper, gardener and sometimes cook. Published by El Dorado Springs Sun once in print and online with author’s permission. Copyright 2017, all rights reserved. This column may not be reprinted, republished or otherwise distributed without author’s permission. Contact Charlotte at gardeningcharlotte at gmail dot com.

AIN’T PRETTY, BUT HOME – Swarms often begin when a honeybee colony runs out of room in their original home, such as the hollow portion of an established tree trunk.

BEE CAREFUL – After cutting a branch, the swarm is carefully moved into their new home in a movable frame hive. The movable frames make it easy to add space and collect honey without destroying the whole bee colony. (Photos by Charlotte Ekker Wiggins).