Vital Gaudreau ased: " What is the risk of contamination that someone takes by collecting a "swarm" from an unknown source?

I have collected around 7 to 10 swarms per year for the last few years in a nearby country town, after they were reported by the public to the local Council. These are always clustered on bushes or sometime bus shelters, and have been out of the hive for only a day or two. They get hived in odd boxes to see how they do. 

In my area, one or more carry EFB and have to be destroyed by the end of the season. Others do not develop a good nest, after all, swarm queens are old. Around a third are casts, small lots, and the virgins do not always mate. But amongst them I always hope to find one good prime swarm, headed by a pedigree(?) queen (assuming large size indicates well-developed ovaries in an old queen). The problem is that she has to be superceded or she will likely die in the winter/spring. The replacements have never yet been better than the queens raised from my better existing colonies. 

So I have come to think you more often than not get rubbish in terms of breeding, with a substantial risk of disease that takes time to deal with and introduces risk from drifting. 

How do diseased stocks survive in the wild? Curiously, I suspect, by swarming. Field trials of artificial swarming by Ritter back in 1987 found 47-92 mites in the artificial swarm compared with 2500-2900 mites left in the parent stock (in the sealed brood). A couple of years back I had a stock that seemed to have virus - suddenly, in autumn , it swarmed. I suspect there may be a natural instinct in bees when succumbing to disease to send out a swarm with whatever healthy bees there are - they would carry some disease, but might be able to establish a new colony and send out another swarm before succumbing. This would be akin to absconding when the nest is heavily attacked by say ants. 

I had hoped to build an apiary by collecting fresh swarms. I now doubt it is worth saving then at all. Perhaps best to collect (to save the public being inconvenienced) but unless they look particularly good, best to destroy immediately, or perhaps de-queen and keep uniting all the swarms together, and take whatever they produce by autumn. Certainly, I would now never ever unite to an established colony. 

It probably depends on where these fresh stray swarms are coming from. Many of mine are possibly feral. Someone else may be picking up superb fresh swarms from those lost by a nearby professional beekeeper. Let's have more case histories. 

Robin Dartington 

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