> differentiating a mating swarm from a real swarm
The bees of a swarm will often follow a virgin queen when she goes out to seek a mate, the bees apparently thinking that if she is lost they will die. — MORLEY, W . S . (1914). BEE-KEEPING FOR PROFIT
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You are faced with a problem that cannot be solved by knowledge, from which you have to flee, against whose intrusive question it is best to escape into the realm of the imagination. And whoever is at home in this realm will one day realize that all science is nothing more than a variant of the imagination, a special subject, so to speak, with all the advantages and the dangers of the specialty. — Groddeck, Georg. (1923). The Book of Id (Das Buch vom Es)
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My comment:
A colony of bees is not of one mind, but follows instinctive urges triggered by internal and external signals. In spring, colonies may begin preparations to raise queens, and potentially cast a swarm. Hives have been observed building and destroying queen cells repeatedly, so the presence of queen cells does not indicate a swarm is about to happen. They may swarm later, or not at all. One of the new queens may hatch and supersede the old queen, and no swarm comes out.
The so-called prime swarm consists of the wintered-over queen and a large percentage of the bees of the colony. Just how these bees are selected, or self-select, is not known. There is no rule for which bees go and which stay, they are of all ages, which makes sense, since both young and old bees will be needed when the swarm tries to establish a new nest. Second and even third swarms are known to sometimes cast forth. In the days when beekeepers spent whole days with their hives during swarming time, more of these things were seen.
A colony of bees is not a machine, but has routines and subroutines that are initiated under certain circumstances. As the colony is not of one mind, some bees respond differently to these conditions and follow different subroutines. When a hive swarms, some go -- some stay. Obviously in the case of afterswarms there are fewer and fewer bees to go with the queen, as some must be left behind.
Normally when a virgin queen goes to mate, of course the hive bees do not follow her. In my opinion, after a hive swarms there may still be bees that are in the swarming mood, so when a queen goes out, some of them may "think" they are swarming, even though there aren't enough of them. So to me, the phenomenon of small so-called virgin swarms is a product of the fuzzy logic that bees use to make decisions. -- Borst, P. (2020) [log in to unmask]
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