LATE SWARMS
 
Aaron was right I just Love to talk about swarms, and just about any
other bee experience I have enjoyed or not.
 
I suspect it is because the first job of responsibility I was given in
the apiary was to "chase" swarms. I even was allowed to drive by my
self the boss's pick me up with twice the cylinders my old Model A had.
 
That year in the small town of Dos Palos, California, which still had a
few wooden sidewalks and many good nesting sites for honeybees in the
old wooden sided building I caught over 100 swarms in July. July is not
the normal swarming season for our bees which were kept 100 miles away
on the central coast but it sure was that year in Dos Palos.
 
Over the year I got a few ideas on swarming and believe that it is a
reaction to both internal conditions in the hive and external
environmental conditions such as honey flows. In the old days it was
common in this area for the cotton to grow six foot tall by season's end
and flower until frost.
 
One year that the old time local beekeepers would talk about was a year
that ended just in time for the annual trip in early November to
Nevada to bring home the winter meat of choice which resulted in the
reduction of the deer population by two or more head per beekeeper
hunter including any women who were allowed to go as long as they stayed
in camp and cooked for the hunters giving the men a chance to fill the
cooks deer tags of course.
 
Anyway they would return in time for Thanksgiving with the legal two
deer's per person and well fed up from the one's consumed in camp. This
particular year the weather had not yet brought a heavy frost or freeze
and the cotton had continued to bloom and yield. (This was so long ago
it was before mechanical cotton pickers and defoliation with chemicals.)
 
The bees had been prepared for the dormant season before the annual
hunting trip and were knocked down to doubles and of course were just
blocked out with honey from bottom to top with bees hanging out from
every crack and dozens of prime swarms braking down the tall cotton
plants in every direction.....
..................................................................;
 
MORE about swarms which come in several flavors, the norm is the prime
swarm which contains an old queen which may be good or not so good and
larger number of bees then the secondary swarm.
 
I always's would ask people who would call me from long distances to pick
up a swarm if it was the size of a basket ball, then I would get it, if
not I would tell them to call the fire department.<G> This only worked a
few times and all callers were soon telling me the size of the swarm was
bigger then a basketball, those guy's in the fire department were not
that slow at all and they would give out my number and tell the people
to be sure and tell him that the swarm was the size of a basket ball or
bigger.
 
Well the size of the prime swarm is normally bigger then the secondary
swarm which will normally contain a virgin queen. Swarms from bee yards
with many hives will also be much bigger then swarms from some hole in
the wall if the bees are active as many bees will join the swarm, you
can see them fat with nectar, pollen collectors, and drones. Many times
after these monster swarms are hived all the drifters will go home and
the returning beekeeper will wonder what happened to his big swarm.
 
OTHER swarms.. Most any queen who leaves the hive for what ever reason
will attract a following of bees. Even a queen alone in a cage left out
in the weather on a hive top will have a ball of bees taking care of her
when the beekeeper returns sometimes days later to find his mistake.
Even queens in a cage placed in a hive that for what ever reason is dead
will attract bees to take care of her. (Writing of commercial bee yards
that have many bee hives in each yard, of course if there are no other
bees around this would not happen or would it.) The point is that when
a weak hive is driven out or leaves for what ever the reason and a queen
is among the bees they will gather on something close and make a small
swarm. I have seen this in large numbers of hives that were declining to
"dink's", which are just a small handful, when I opened one of these
sick hives, (this was way before anyone had found any kind of mites),
and I watched in amazement as the queen flew off with maybe 100 bees
following her. I am sure this is common in hives that are said to have
disappearing bees and more then likely other bee problems that cause
the population to crash. I am also sure that these small swarms
normally do not survive. I have tried to use the queens from them in
other hives to see if they were OK and they never survived so I can't
even say if they could spread whatever their original problem was if it
was a virus.
 
BREEDING QUEENS, if you use baby nuc's and don't catch the queens in a
few day's after they start to lay you have many little swarms. This is
called bad news and most queen breeders keep real good daily diaries
so they know when to catch their queens or risk losing them. Also late
in the queen season when virgins are flying and if a mated queen leaves
in a small swarm the whole bee world becomes messed up and some of these
swarms will have dozens of queens and it seems they will never find
their way back to their own nuc's, this is also bad news in the queen
yard.
 
If I don't end this here I may repeat my story of being stung in the
mouth by queen bees and risk the danger of not telling it like I did the
last time so I won't.
 
ttul, the OLd Drone
 
 
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(w)Opinions are not necessarily facts. Use at own risk.
 
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