Swarm Catching Success

• #1- What happens when you know more about swarms.

• #2- Six Characteristics about Swarms.

Now let’s get into the core of each point! The world of beekeeping is waiting for you!

Point #1- What happens when you understand Swarms better.

When it comes to catching or trapping swarms, there’s a lot more to it than simply having a big ball of thousands of honey bees move into one of your boxes. Learning some of their characteristics will likely improve the acceptance rate of swarms into your equipment this year!

The main thing that you need to learn which I will go into greater detail in Point #2, is that swarms are fickle and easily disturbed. Meaning that they need time to acclimate and orientate to their new home (whatever that may be) before we try to do any manipulation or relocation, otherwise they are likely to swarm and leave again.

Let’s get started in learning just six characteristics of Honey Bee Swarms so that you have greater success as you finesse your swarm catching abilities!

Point #2- Six Characteristics about Swarms.

Characteristic #1- Something that I just touched on which is that swarms need time to acclimate to their new environment whether that’s your swarm trap or empty equipment that they moved into when you weren’t looking.

How much time do they need so that you don’t disturb them, causing them to fly away? Give them at least five days but no more than seven because swarms need time for the queen to begin laying eggs in order feel “established.”

Don’t give them more than seven days because they may get very heavy, very fast! Swarms come with their bellies full of nectar; their fuel to begin producing wax platelets so that they can start building a home from scratch if needed.

Characteristic #2- As previously touched on, swarms get heavy quickly. If you have a swarm that has moved into one of your swarm traps and it’s up high, requiring a ladder to retrieve, then don’t leave them there for more than a week. Otherwise they may be too heavy for you to deal with, especially during a nectar flow!

Characteristic #3- Swarms love to move into the top of things. For example, when I have swarms come to me, they usually move into the top of my unused deep hive bodies that I’m storing until ready to begin making splits.

If you store your boxes with frames outside, prop the hive covers up just enough so that rain cannot get in but bees can. You may find that during the swarming season that a colony finds your equipment particularly enticing and perfect for their new home.

Characteristic #4- One of the primary reasons that swarms happen in the first place is due to the colony feeling cramped and overcrowded. This tends to induce the swarming tendency and a few days later a swarm is cast from the colony.

This will especially happen after a few days of rain. There’s nothing like a rainy day that makes the bees stay at home, cramped and crowded, that will make them feel like swarming.

So be on the lookout and have your swarm traps ready, especially in the spring time, expecting to see your apiaries cast off primary and even secondary swarms after a bout of rain.

Characteristic #5- Swarms are attracted to nearby apiaries. Swarms are already attracted to stuff that smells like bees or other attractive aromas which is why we often bait our swarm traps, right?

Well if you have other beekeepers in your area, some that you may not even be aware of, their swarms may come into your apiary because they are attracted to the bee smells. Just another reason to have traps set in ideal spots to catch your neighbors’s bees 😉!

Characteristic #6- Small swarms may come around your bees, moving from tree to tree or bush to bush, simply to gain numbers in their population.

I have seen many times where small, weak swarms with gather around apiaries to increase their population size by drawing off my local foragers, thus increasing their colony size to something that has a better chance of surviving before taking off into the sunset, never to be seen again.

This characteristic isn’t really helpful, just something interesting to know about.

Of course there are many other characteristics about swarms that will help you but I’m not giving them to you today. 😜 Take the survey below!!

Thanks for reading all the way to the bottom 😉. I want to hear from you!