WHEN YOU FIND A SWARM ON THE SIDE OF YOUR BEEHIVE

Okay everyone the CRAZIEST thing happened a couple of days ago...So, I went out to my bee yard to film a video for the YouTube channel and check on a couple hives to see their progress, when all of a sudden I heard a loud buzzing.. At first I was like "man they're still bearding? It's almost October already" (my hives have been bearding through most of August and September). Well anyways...I walked over to the hive I was hearing the loud hum from when all of a sudden I saw this!..

There was a swarm on my bee hive!!

So to give a little bit of back story on this honey bee colony.. This colony has been straight BUMPING all through July, August, and September. It has been so strong that I have had to pull 2 frames of capped brood and a frame of honey from it every 2 weeks. ( I have been using this colony to strengthen my other colonies that need a boost, aka equalizing.) So at the next 2 week interval I went into the colony with the intention to take my 2 brood frames and replace them with empty drawn frames to give them something to do. But, I realized something did not go according to plan.

They had already begun making swarm cells...

Ugh..it was the end of August when I saw this. Which is NOT the time for a hive to be swarming and requeening in Michigan. So I did the only thing I knew to do and I found the queen (which appeared to be slimming down a bit already. When a queen is preparing to swarm the worker bees will begin to starve her so that she loses enough weight to be able to fly again.) This told me that if I don't move her now I will lose her. Once the swarm impulse is started, it can't be stopped. So I took her, some bees, and 3 frames (1 brood, 1 frame she was laying on, and 1 honey frame) and moved them into a 5 frame nuc box with 2 more drawn frames.

An artificial swarm

This is what us beekeepers like to call an artificial swarm. It's a sneaky way to trick the bees because, it acts as if the queen swarmed and moved into a different box. That way you can still keep your queen and not losing her to the trees.

Well, in most circumstances this works out great! But in my case, it did not go as well as I was hoping. My intention was to move the queen and those 5 frames back into the colony after around a week. During that time I left the queen cells to develop (I figured I would let them do their thing and run an experiment on what happens if you let a queen mate in September) and move the queen cells once I reintroduced the original queen back into the colony.

Well apparently when you take a hive's queen this late in the year, the hive decides to just give up. When I was last in the hive, the entire top deep box was full of capped honey. When I came back a week later, all of the honey had been consumed and all of the bees had their head's in the cells with their butts poking out (something I think is so cute but this time of year..it is NOT CUTE).

But, I still had the intention of giving them back their queen so I grabbed the 5 frame nuc box I had her in, opened the original hive and removed all of the frames with queen cells and set those aside. Then, took all of the bees that were in the bottom box of the original hive, shook them into the top box which I had taken off of the hive and set aside. Moved the queen and her 5 frames into the bottom box of the original hive, plugged up the bottom entrance with grass. Placed 5 frames next to the 5 frames she was on to then fill up the bottom 10 frame deep. Then, I put down a piece of newspaper and put the top deep back onto the hive.

Why??

Okay so let me break down every thing I did there and why...

• First, if there are any queen cells present when you reintroduce a mated queen, the hive will not accept her. New fresh queens that they made theirselves always win over a queen you introduce to them.
• Secondly, I purposely placed her in the bottom box because I have noticed that whenever I have combined a queen with another hive via the newspaper method. If I place her above the main cluster of bees they always seem to reject her or she will never go down into the bottom box. The main portion of bees have to be above her with the only way to get out of the hive being to go down through the newspaper. I also wonder if it is easier for the queen's pheromone to spread throughout the hive when she is below rather than above...
• Lastly, the reason I plugged up the bottom entrance with grass is because as you can see in the phot to the left there are a lot of bees on the outside of the hive. There were bees flying all over the place. But, since I placed the queen in the bottom box I did not want any bees coming into the hive to kill her. Thus, plugging up the entrance with grass forces them to have to remove the grass to get in. This will take a few hours. During that time the bees have a chance to reorient theirselves when going back into the hive. So by the time they come in, the queen's pheromone should have dispersed throughout the hive so that they are walking into a hive that is no longer queen less but with a mated queen.

Now back to the swarm...

So after all of this I waited a few days to let them work down through the newspaper before I would go back to make sure she was still there and laying. This is when I saw the swarm on the side of the hive. I instantly thought "oh no what if they kicked her out?!" So I scooped all of the bees that were on the side of the hive into a jester nuc box when all of a sudden I SAW A QUEEN!!! This was a swarm!! But, this was not the queen I remembered. So I dug into the hive and instantly started seeing sheets on sheets of eggs. Okay...this is a good sign. Then I flipped a frame over and there she was..Phew that was a close one. She was still in the hive, laying, and looking as plump and healthy as ever.

Okay then where did this swarm come from??

Now that is the real question. I have some theories. One of them being that when I moved the queen cells I had moved them into a 5 frame nuc box with some bees. Maybe one of the queens emerged and they tried swarming back.. But this queen looks older as she has more color and has a larger abdomen than most new queens have. I also only saw one queen cells that maybe a queen came out of?.. I say maybe because the bees had already begun tearing the cells down. Also, when it comes to timing there should have been queen on a flight yet unless she emerged and instantly decided to leave.

So where did she come from? We will never know for sure. But, now I have a swarm in a 5 frame nuc with little to no resources and no brood with winter right around the corner... I moved her back home with me so that she doesn't get robbed out as she attempts to build up. Robbing has been a very big problem in my bee yard right now. I just opened the hive up to let them orientate and will be releasing the queen from the clip I put her in today. It is common for new swarms to abscond but they can't do that if the queen can't move. So, that is why I have kept her in a clip. I am also going to steal a few frames of brood and resources from other hives for them to use to build up for winter. But, other than that there isn't much else I know to do except to cross my fingers and see what happens.

Do you think it will work?

Will a swarm caught this late be able to build up in time for our Michigan winter?

If you have any tips please send them my way!!

The YouTube video covering this LIVE will be dropping Saturday!