Strong and healthy honey bee colonies divide to
create new colonies, find new homes, and expand their range in a process that
we call swarming. The spring of the year is the time when swarming occurs most
often. When a swarm of bees leaves its hive, it is the result of about a month
of preparation. The actual timing of the swarming event often follows a period
of rainy days. Wet springs, like the Mid-South is experiencing this year, seem
to produce more swarms than dryer seasons. One reason for the increase in
swarming may be the abundance of available nectar from certain plants during
rainy seasons. If the bees have plenty of nectar to forage, they may fill their
hive’s brood nest with honey leaving the queen few cells to lay eggs. The
resulting brood nest congestion is the principal trigger to swarm.
Typically, when a honey bee colony swarms, about
half of the bees rapidly exit the hive along with the old queen. The individual
bees fly in circles for a few minutes, and then they gather in a resting place
on a tree limb or structure. The swarm remains in this location for a few hours
or, sometimes, a few days. During this waiting period, scout bees leave the
clustered swarm and search for a suitable cavity to serve as the colony’s new
hive. The entire swarming event is controlled by the combined pheromones of the
queen and worker bees. These pheromones are used to gather the swarm together
at a resting point, and they also help the swarm of bees fly together to their
new hive. Once the swarm arrives at their new hive, workers raise their
abdomens and fan their wings to emit a plume of Nasanov gland pheromone to direct
bees to their new home. In today’s photo, Jeremy Bemis and I capture a swarm. With
the queen inside, workers are fanning Nasanov gland pheromone to call bees into
the hive.
--Richard
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