This is an unusual year, we’ve just learned. Maybe it’s the mild winter, the early warmup in spring, or the phases of the moon, who knows. But the honeybees are swarming big-time this year.
A swarm is a natural act of a bee hive. It’s the way they reproduce, the sign of a healthy colony.
The queen lays tons of eggs to boost the hive population. When things get too crowded, the queen’s pheromones signal the workers of the need to swarm.
Workers build several extra-large cells and give those eggs special food and attention to raise a queen. A queen is just like all the other worker bees except she is larger from having stayed in the larval stage until full maturity.
On a nice day, just before any of the new queens emerge, about half of the bees in the hive fill up on honey and leave with the existing queen to go to a new home. Scout bees will have checked out all the possibilities weeks before this occurrence.
With any luck, they will have found a suitable home where the hive can survive the next winter.
That’s where clever beekeepers come in. Beekeepers more clever than we are have designed the perfect spot for bees looking for a new home. It is a wooden box hung up in a nearby tree. A specific size and dimension, the box is made even more appealing with bee frames, lemongrass and propolis.
Many times these boxes, called swarm traps, just sit empty most of the season. Last year was our first experience with a swarm trap and it was unoccupied until July.
But this year was a different story!
We put up the box last Saturday afternoon. Two curious bees showed up before we were done. By the next morning, bees were coming in and out of the box – a lot of them!
How could this be a swarm – already?
A friend, who’s been catching bees for a couple years assured us that we had a swarm. In fact, it’s been phenomenal this year. Already he has captured 17 swarms, more than all of the past two years.
He was right! We did have guests in our bee hotel!
Late on Saturday evening we started the careful process of taking down the 20-pound box (and probably about 10 pounds of bees). Not an easy task, given the fact that the box is about 12 feet above the ground in the crook of an oak tree.
First, don the bee suits. Then find an extension ladder. Close the opening to the trap and attach a safety rope to the box.
Then one person on the ladder unhooks the box while a second person holds the rope. The box is guided to the ground and then placed on the bed of a pickup truck, which will take the bees to their new — and hopefully permanent — home.
Lucky for us, a friend in town needed bees so these ladies had a new hive waiting.
The real fun comes the next day — opening the box to see what the ladies have done. It’s almost like Christmas. Beautiful white comb, busy bees on every frame and , the best of all, eggs. Just what you want to see in a swarm trap!
Today we brought the trap back to our place. We put new frames in the box, added a little lemongrass oil, and carried it back to the oak tree on the edge of our woods.
And would you believe it? There was a honeybee waiting to check it out.
And so it begins again!
Bee Lady Honey 