My Hive Swarmed…Again!

Ask any beekeeper anywhere what the biggest challenges of beekeeping are and somewhere on the list they will add swarming. Swarming for honeybees is to that of plants sending shoots or sprouts to other places in their space. It’s their way of populating the area around them with good genetics. Essentially, if a hive is strong and healthy enough to survive winter AND have so many bees in the hive that they want to swarm, they must have a good queen with good genes.

The swarm takes this queen with a fraction of the bees from the original colony to a new location to try and start a new home. While this is a natural process that colonies benefit from, it can be very costly to the beekeeper. These bees that have now left were an excellent workforce to gather honey for the hive. If you had plans to get supers on supers of honey this year (40+ pounds), you can kiss that goodbye and set your expectations on having maybe just one supers worth of honey (<20lbs).

This isn’t even mentioning the hassles of trying to catch the swarm, being responsible for where the swarm goes or ensuring that the original hive gets a new queen after being queenless. And if didn’t think that was challenging enough, there’s more! A hive typically only swarms once a year. Though here in Charlotte, NC the swarm season lasts from late February to the end of May. This means that if your hive swarms early enough in the season, it can swarm again!

This may sound great to a beekeeper who likes to make splits (removing some of the bees with the queen in an attempt to make them think that they’ve swarmed), but to the beekeepers that only want a few colonies and a get supply of honey, this can be a nightmare season. For new beekeepers, I always try and make it known that while this isn’t great for the honey harvest, it means that the beekeeper did everything right except manage swarming. We can’t blame ourselves or the hive for being healthy and doing what’s natural to them but we can blame ourselves for not taking action when we had the chance to prevent this.

This isn’t however the case for all beekeepers, even here in Charlotte, NC with a longer swarm season than other regions. The key to avoid this is simply better hive management with an addition of genetics that are less prone to swarming. Here’s a list of few methods that we have found to be effective against swarming

• Making Splits

  • As mentioned before, this method not only allows you to have more bees but also doesn’t limit your honey! No matter where your bees are, you’ll bee happier having them in your yard than in a tree somewhere. The key to this working is having the space for the bees. Here in Charlotte, NC we have several yards or apiaries where we can put excess hives. We realize this is not everyone’s case and that each climate has it’s own limitations to how many hives you can put in an area that will allow the bees to have enough forage. For that we have other methods that don’t depend on these factors.

• Give them space!

  • The main reasons for hives swarming is due to their not being enough space for the bees to move around combined with the queen not having anywhere else to lay eggs. Alleviating this is simple! Just add more boxes in the form of honey supers (giving the bees more room) or brood boxes (giving the queen more places to lay eggs).

• Demaree

  • We won’t go into this method too far as it’s much more easily explained in video form. Just think of this as the answer for beekeepers who are still seeing signs of swarming after adding space that don’t want to expand their aparies

• Less swarmy genetics

  • This has been our best solution for those hives that seem to swarm, swarm and swarm again! This is not a product of lack of space but rather the genetics of the queen and thus bees. Thankfully there are different breeds of bees that have different characteristics. Italian honeybees are often seen as the gold standard for less swarmy genetics.

Like most questions in beekeeping, there isn’t just one simple answer and most answers depend on factors specific to your apiary. We recommend learning and practicing all of these methods so that you know what works best for your bees in the season you’re experiencing! You never know when you’re gonna need them.

Emergency swarm cells seen on a honey frame. This occurs after a hive has swarmed.