Honey Bee Swarms

A cluster of bees hanging on the branch of a tree or the side of a building is a sure cause for human excitement.  Honey bee swarming is part of the birth and renewal of nature associated with the spring season.

A swarm is the way honey bees start a new colony.  Honey bees are social insects and all social insects, such as some bees and wasps, and all ants and termites, exist only as a colony.  So the reproduction of social insects depends on establishing new colonies.

In most social insects, it is a mated queen that gets a new colony going.  But honey bees are different.   These insects send a winged armada, a queen and a batch of workers from the old colony, in order to establish an additional colony.  This involves a three stage process.

During the first stage, the colony produces queens and male drones. The queen is produced by feeding her the right food.  For stage two, the queen emerges and leaves her hive.  During this flight, the queen-to-be will mate with drones strong enough to catch her.  This is the only time during her lifetime she will mate.  She will remain fertile for the remainder of her life, laying up to 2,000 eggs per day.

It is now back to the home hive to determine which queen will become victorious and become ruler of the hive.  She has the job of killing other pretenders to the throne.  Any queens that remain in the cells are stung to death by the new queen.  If another queen has emerged, the two engage in a battle to see who gets to take over the old hive.

The old queen, the new queen's mother, does her motherly duty and relinquishes her duties.  She takes a cadre of field-seasoned workers and leaves.  But first the workers fill their stomachs with honey, food to sustain them over the next three or four days.  Then, following a flurry of frenzied activity, the buzzing crew departs the old hive.

Stage three is when we encounter the swarm of bees.  The bees generally land on a post or limb a short distance away from the old hive location.  The queen becomes the focal point for the swarming bees.  They all land and form a bee mass or cluster over her body.   Some of the bees then take up the job of finding a new home.  They fly from the cluster and search for just the right place to live.  The searcher bees return to the swarm to make the swarm aware of a potential home they have discovered.

Swarms of bees sometimes frighten people, though they are usually not aggressive at this stage of their life cycle. This is principally due to the fact that swarming bees have no hive to defend and are more interested in finding a new nesting point for their queen.  This does not mean that bee swarms will not attack if they perceive a threat; however, most bees only attack in response to intrusions against their hive, and swarming bees have no hive.  Most swarms will move on and find a suitable nesting location in a day or two.   If needed, bee keepers can be called to capture and relocated the bees.