Swarming Bees And Manifest Destiny

The little wenches are up to something. I can feel it. The communal buzzing is pitched a note or two higher, the comings and goings at the hive door have reached a fevered state. I think the girls are getting ready to leave me. Again.I’m trying not to take it personally. But it’s hard not to feel like this is the thanks you get for all the nurturing, fretting and sweating. It’s like parenting 50,000 teenagers.

My best hive is getting ready to swarm.

That sounds frightening, and I imagine yelling “Swarm of bees!” in a crowded movie theater would have the same panicked outcome as the more familiar cry of “Fire!” One tends to think of a swarm as an angry mob wielding venomous stingers, terrified villagers fleeing before them.

The reality is a lot less frightening. Before they swarm, worker bees stuff themselves with all the honey they can hold, to tide them over until they find a new home. Attacking terrified villagers is extremely low on their list of priorities. Imagine going on a pillaging spree immediately after indulging in a huge Thanksgiving feast. Not likely. All they want to do is find someplace to call home.

Bees swarm when the living is easy. Food is plentiful, the queen is churning out 2,000 eggs daily, the days are long and warm. The organizing committee decides the time is right to go out and conquer the world, or at least establish one new colony.

Construction crews build a handful of “swarm cells,” which are queen-bee-sized compartments roughly the size and shape of peanuts. The reigning queen lays an egg in each, and workers feed the larvae copious amounts of royal jelly, a honeybee secretion containing proteins that trigger development of queen bees. With a selection of potential successors simmering, about half the hive’s bees, including the queen, head off in a swarm to find new digs.

Surrounding the queen, who is not a strong flier, the swarm perches temporarily in a spot near the hive. A few dozen scout bees, the hive’s most experienced foragers, fly off to look for a suitable home site, preferably a hollow tree. When a scout finds promising real estate, she comes back to the swarm and dances to show the others the direction and distance to her chosen location. If she can convince other scouts to check out her find and they agree it’s a keeper, they’ll all come back and promote the new site to the other scouts. Over a period lasting from several hours to three days, the scouts negotiate and evaluate the options. Finally a site is agreed upon, and the swarm follows the scouts to its new home.

Last year, both of our hives swarmed twice. While swarming is evidence of a healthy hive, from a beekeeper’s perspective it’s decidedly not a cause for celebration. Half your bees are gone; a new queen has to be raised and go on a mating flight before she can produce any youngsters to start rebuilding the ranks; and basically your honey production for that hive is shot for the season.

If you have lived a good and worthy life, you just might be lucky enough to capture your swarmed bees, assuming you a) saw them swarm, b) know where they are, and c) can get to them. I have not lived such a life, apparently. I did witness the first hullabaloo at the hive that told me something was up, and watched a cloud of bees ascend into the air. The little brats formed into a giant cluster high up in our cherry tree, from which vantage point they pooped pretty pastel dots all over my car. Think French impressionist George Seurat working in nothing but yellows and oranges, with a beat-up Honda for a canvas.

I stood below cursing their ungrateful little striped selves. Then, as suddenly as they left, they flew back down into the hive. If I had any idea what I was doing, I might have been able to put them on lockdown at that point and keep them from leaving, but I didn’t. And sure enough, a little while later off they swooped again. Back to their staging area, high up in the cherry tree. Directly over my car. More pointillism. Another trip back to the hive, and a third jaunt up the tree. This time they stayed put for a while, but before we could figure out a way to get them down, they took off, never to be seen again.

I asked master beekeeper Ray Lackey what the whole back and forth thing was about, and he likened it to a hostage situation. Your ringleaders decide the hive is strong enough to swarm, and they round up the queen and head off, thinking she’s with them. A contingent of homebodies disagrees, and physically restrains the queen, preventing her from leaving. The swarm gets into the tree, realizes the queen has been left behind, and goes back to get her.

Swarming is something of a mystery. If a hive gets too crowded, a swarm makes sense. But, as in our case, even with plenty of room you can still get swarming. Some colonies just seem to be genetically prone, and once the notion gets into their fuzzy little heads, it can be impossible to dissuade them. So far this year neither hive has actually swarmed, despite the rumblings. I’ll keep hoping that their restlessness will pass and we’ll actually get through swarm season without any runaways.

Next time: Karma sends us a present.