Hello All

This year for me has been one of losing many swarms (and getting some
also!), since I did not have sufficient time to carry out diligent swarm
control especially since the middle of June. So I got to thinking recently
about swarming and its effect on the bee colony. This was largely prompted
by a comment made in a recent issue of The American Bee Journal - I cannot
remember the writer's name - to the effect that he had not noticed any major
difference between the yields of honey from a hive which swarmed and one
that did not.

I would have thought though, that a hive which swarmed before or during the
main flow, would lose the beekeeper a major amount if not all of the
possible return from that hive, because of the loss of foragers.

Would it not however make sense to forget about swarm control after the main
flow?. I realise that this may be major heresy but I looked up E B Wedmore -
A Manual of Beekeeping, my bible on beekeeping, and found out the following:

A bee can carry up to 100mg in its honey sac. Let us assume a swarm of say
30,000 bees, they thus clear off with a maximum of 3 kilos of honey, (6.6
lbs in old money). So the stories I heard about the swarm taking away half
of the honey are not true. In any event the honey carried by the swarm
cannot weigh more than the swarm itself!

Wedmore says that the honey sac contains sufficient to keep the bee going
for several days (for its individual use). Let us say 5 days making 20mg per
day.

Let us assume further, that if the 30000 bees did not swarm, that they would
each live on average for 11 days (half of the life of a foraging bee). Each
bee will consume 11 by 20mg of honey in that time making 220mg, The 30000
bees will thus consume 6.6 kilos of honey - over twice as much as the swarm
brought with them. And at the end of this time you have still lost the
30,000 bees. Even if they bring in a small percentage of what they consume,
surely there is a major benefit in having a young queen going into winter.
And are not the swarmers taking a lot of varroa mites with them?

What does the List think?

Sincerely
Tom Barrett
49 South Park
Foxrock
Dublin 18