Swarming.....now?

[Stone]

On September 1, my strongest colony swarmed.  I hadn't looked in on them for a couple of weeks and while I was working in the meadow, I heard a roar of bees and there they were in the early evening sun.  Then they left.  I thought they were from a feral colony that had been  robbing my TBHs all summer.  The next day I realized they came from mine when I opened up the hive an sawfive or six opened swarm cells.  I've been feeding my three colonies like crazy because they barely have any stores.  Then this colony swarms???

Then today, I got a call to remove a swarm from a neighborhood in Queens. 

This is my second year of beekeeping and it surprises me that colonies swarm this late.  Can someone please tell me what's going on...

[ArmucheeBee]

I had a swarm in Sep. 2009 due to loss of stores, then one in Oct. 2009 from a feral hive probably due to the same.  If you were feeding heavy they may have gone into spring time mode and thought that was what they were suppose to be doing!  Keep the brood chamber open when feeding heavy I would say.  Were they swarm cells or supercedure?

[deknow]

one of the goals of beekeeping management is to prevent the bees from swarming.  it shouldn't be too surprising that this doesn't always work (as they are simply trying to reproduce), and that sometimes instead of preventing swarms, it simply delays them.

deknow

[L Daxon]

I am pretty sure I lost a swarm 2 days ago.  The colony was bearding pretty bad, especially in the evenings, but I figured it was too late to do a split.  Either they swarmed (I had seen some open swarm cells last Sat.).....OR the temperatures have dropped about 10 degrees from around 100 to 90 or lower in the day and down into the 60s at night.  Could it be because it is cooler they are just staying inside more and not bearding as much (have little groupings outside in the evenings now but nothing like it was.)   

[hardwood]

I've had 5 swarm calls in the last 2 weeks. Not unusual for here in FL.

Scott

[hankdog1]

Stone it helps to know where your at.  Put your location in there as Hardwoods says it's not all that uncommon in the deep south.

[BjornBee]

New York city....

[Stone]

My hives are in Delaware County in upstate New York - western side of the Catskill Mountains.  The nights are getting down into 40s now.  I work (teach high school science) in Queens, one of the five "boroughs" of New York City. That's where I was called to remove a swarm - just as I was arriving up here in Delaware County, 160 miles away!  Missed that one.

I've been feeding my colonies 5:4 syrup with 1 1/2 teaspoons of Honey Bee Healthy to each 5 lb mix of sugar syrup.  Obviously, I can't get to the hives every day, but they suck up a 5 lb mix of syrup in 24 hours whenever I do.  And they'll do this for 3 days straight if I get a chance. 

As soon as I started feeding in Late July, they came completely to life!  The colony that swarmed started bearding a few weeks before.  I thought it was because they were just extremely hot; we had some scorchers for awhile.  When I checked, I saw they had enough top bars to expand into and no new comb was being drawn to speak of.  I didn't do a full inspection because I didn't see the need.  That was my mistake.  If I had, I would have caught those swarm cells and I could have tried a split.  Yes, they were the classic cells hanging from the bottoms of two (maybe three) combs.

[Stone]

one of the goals of beekeeping management is to prevent the bees from swarming.  it shouldn't be too surprising that this doesn't always work (as they are simply trying to reproduce), and that sometimes instead of preventing swarms, it simply delays them.

deknow

Yep. That's what all the books say.

[tandemrx]

Stone,

If it makes you feel any better, I am about the same latitude as you and had 2 swarms in late august this year from hives that I just wouldn't have expected it from (although in retrospect, one of them was just boiling over with bees and I hadn't inspected in a while because I had supers on and the other probably had an imbalance of brood space to keep up with a prolific queen - who knows).

my saying is that (if you will pardon the nature of the comment), "keeping bees from swarming is kind of like trying to keep teenagers from having sex.  You can give them a good home, teach them the best you can, monitor their activities . . . but . . . . bees will be bees and they don't appear to read the bee books."

And my thought on the bee books is that if we had bee books written in slovenian or italian, then maybe our bees could read them and do as they are supposed to do.  But all our bee books are in English.

[Stone]

"keeping bees from swarming is kind of like trying to keep teenagers from having sex.  You can give them a good home, teach them the best you can, monitor their activities . . . but . . . . bees will be bees and they don't appear to read the bee books."

That's a very good point.  :)  Not sure I could have prevented them from swarming, but I would have liked to have had the chance to do a split if I had spotted those swarm cells in time. This was actually the first time I had ever witnessed a swarm in the air and it was really thrilling to see - even if it was from my own hive. 

[tandemrx]

Just think how great it is that you are populating the world with more feral bees!  What a great contribution to nature!  :)

I mentioned that to my wife after she had to witness one of our last swarms.  It was our backyard hive and she is attached to it . . . so it was tough for her to watch half of them leave for parts unknown.

When I put it into perspective of contributing to more bees out in nature she felt almost good about it.