Hi!

I had one hive swarm Sunday 5/23/04, and another one Monday 5/24/04.

Sunday was a gloomy morning, storms predicted.  I walked back to my bee yard and found a swarm covering a fence post on the west edge of my bee yard.

I had checked my hives last week, and added two honey supers each to my two hives that made it through the winter, and added a second deep super to each of my four package hives.  All the hives looked healthy, but none of them seemed overcrowded.  I admit I didn't look at every frame to see if there were queen cells, but this is so early I didn't expect them.  As swarms go, it wasn't very large; perhaps the volume of a basketball.

I was actually back in the bee yard at about 3:00 Monday when the second swarm happened.  I was wearing my bee suit and was inspecting the swarm I had captured Sunday.  It was overcast and had been threatening rain all morning.  Then the clouds parted and the sun broke through.  Suddenly I realized it was getting noisy; I turned around, and the hive nearest me was buzzing as loud as a gasoline lawn mower.  Bees came boiling out the bottom entrance like a horizontal waterfall.  They flew up into the air and made a cloud above me that darkened the sun.  They flew higher, spread out, and began to settle on some raspberry bushes on our west fence line.  After about fifteen minutes, they had settled into a cluster about the size of a bushel basket.

I ran back to the garage and threw together a spare hive with empty frames, top, and base.  Then I brought it all back to the bee yard, along with a large cardboard box and a set of pruning shears.  I set up the hive at the back of the bee yard, and took the box and shears over to the swarm.  I gently cut off the branches the bees were on, and lowered them into the box and shut it.  I took the box back to the open new hive, gave it a good thump, poured the bees into the hive, and slapped the cover on.  I saw bees begin to settle on the front of the hive and start to walk in, so I think I got the queen into the new hive.  I'll check later to see.

What bothers me is that the earliest I've ever had a swarm is June 16th; to have swarms May 23rd and 24th really surprised me.  The old beekeeper's lore-poem comes to mind: "A swarm in May is worth a load of hay, a swarm in June is worth a silver spoon, a swarm in July isn't worth a fly."  That means that an early swarm is more likely to have enough time to build up population to collect honey and survive the following winter - an important consideration in times when you couldn't just order a package of bees delivered through the U.S. Post Office!
I wonder if anybody is tracking swarming activity and timing as yet another possible indicator of global warming?

Has anybody else had early swarms?

-Gary P.
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Fuzzy Bear Farm
Marengo IL (between Chicago and Rockford)

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