SwarmResponse

Southcentral Alaska Beekeepers Association

If you are a SABA
beekeeper interested
in catching swarms
this summer please
email:
victors@mtaoline.net

Your help is appreciated!

Swarm Prevention
by: Steve Victors

Swarm prevention is often the goal with the beekeeper, and swarm promotion is often the goal with
the hive. Nature’s way of propagating the species often gets in the way of the production of honey.
The beekeepers goal is to get the population of the hive as high as possible without triggering the
swarm. It is the bees that gather the honey, and the more of them, the more they will gather. A
certain number of bees are necessary to maintain and care for the brood nest. For the sake of
argument let’s say that a brood nest is at full size of 8 deep frames and it takes 3 to 4 pounds of
bees to cover and tend it. This comes to about twelve to fifteen thousand bees. These are the
consumers of the hive. They are fed and kept alive by the efforts of the foragers, a work force of
about forty to fifty thousand bees.   Because there are three times as many producers (foragers) as
there are consumers more food is brought in than is used up, and that is the good news for the
beekeeper. It is about at this population level that the bees tend to reach full strength and decide to
swarm out in search of a new home (taking half of the hive with them and a couple of pounds of
honey with them). The house bees stay behind because there is still all that work to do. It is the
extra foragers who go off to start a new home. If we look at the population dynamics of the hive after
the swarm we now have about the same number of consumers as we have foragers and the
income of food does not greatly exceed its consumption as it used to do. In fact it may that the bees
eat up the surplus that they have while raising another batch of foragers. Therefore, there is no
surplus for the beekeeper to take advantage of. This is why it is bad news for the beekeeper to have
a swarm if they are in the honey business. If the intent of the beehives is strictly for pollination then it
makes little difference because the bees are still in the area but are now in two homes. Knowing
the signs of swarming and being able to predict it helps the beekeeper keep ahead of the bees and
will increase the honey yield. As far as I know bees can’t count. They need to rely on some other
method to let them know when the population is large enough to be able to split the hive into halves
and go their own way.   It is suspected that bees rely on a combination of things that give them the
idea that the hive is becoming crowded. Increased congestion and lack of good airflow are certainly
factors. To the beekeeper this means that the bees are filling up all the spaces between the frames
with their bodies. Loss of ventilation and air circulation will lead to a buildup of carbon dioxide and
heat. If the bees have no space to expand into to relieve this congestion, the bees are very likely to
swarm. A common method for providing more room is reversing supers. By this the beekeeper
takes the lower super that is empty of brood and places it above the brood nest. Queen cells
generally form along the bottom bars and around the edges of the comb during swarming time. A
key point to remember is that it takes a queen 16 days to go from egg to emerging queen. Swarms
leave the nest prior to the emergence of a new queen. For practical purposes, this means that
when a swarm cell has an egg deposited in it, there are approximately 14 days before the bees
swarm. To the beekeeper, this means that if part of the swarm prevention measures that the
beekeeper employs includes removing queen/swarm cells. The beekeeper must remove the cells
within this 14 day time period. The presence of queen cells indicates to the beekeeper that the
bees think something is wrong with their home. If swarm cells are present, add a super to give
more space. The beekeeper should also keep in mind that all developing bees spend three or four
days as an egg or young larvae that is basically indistinguishable from any other type of bee. For
practical purposes this leaves only a ten day period in which a beekeeper can find a swarm cell
before it is too late.

In my personal swarm prevention program, I provide extra supers for the bees to move into before
they become crowded. Religiously inspect the hive once every ten days. I remove all queen cells
even the empty ones whenever I find them. I have noticed that I rarely get swarm cells before the
middle of June. After the middle of June, my hive inspections are more detailed and thorough as I
carefully examine all frames in the brood chamber. Caging the queen will also prevent swarming
but only after the hive has been inspected a few days later for emergency queen cells that can be
found anywhere in the brood nest. Make a very careful inspection here; emergency cells can be very
hard to find because they may not stick out too far from the face of the comb as the bees can
reshape the cells under the queen cell to give room for its shape.

Palmer

Beverly Barker
745-6725

Valley

Wasilla

Gary
982-6850

Jacob Nay
317-3435

Houston/Meadow Lakes

Contacts for Honeybee Swarm Response

We do not respond to Yellow Jacket swarms, please be sure you are in
need of Honeybee retrieval when you call the beekeepers listed below.

Honeybee --> Yellow Jacket -->

We are not exterminators, but beekeepers wanting honeybee swarms.

Anchorage

Shad Barnett
727-6825

Kenn Barnett
349-8866

Zane Giles
280-7199

Michael Mott
632-1814c text capable

Heather Johnson
952-7124

Eagle River/ Chugiak

Tom Elliott
688-2572

Dale Shillington
632-1109

Anchorage to Elkutna
Harry Evans
230-8458

Kayla Tomlinson
250-4435