Swarming Bees

We have officially been backyard beekeepers for a year now.  It has been quite interesting.  Today was an especially interesting bee day!

I heard loud buzzing and looked outside.  There were bees flying around everywhere in our backyard!  I had never seen bees swarm before, but it was immediately apparent that that was what was happening.  Beekeepers do their best to make the hive conditions such that the bees don't feel they need to swarm, but it is fairly common for that to happen in the spring.  In preparation for swarming, the bees create a new queen and then one of the queens and about half of the bees leave to make a new home for themselves.  Swarming is not a good thing, but it is an amazing and fascinating sight.  

Luckily for us, our bees chose our blackberry bush as their temporary new home.  As you can see from the pictures, the bees cluster together and there were a lot of them.  The blackberry branches are not very thick, but the bees were a solid mass with many still on the ground and flying in the air.

Swarming bees are extremely docile since they do not have young or a home to protect.  Plus they gorge before leaving so they have enough to sustain themselves until they get established in a new location.   

Todd got an empty hive and began to literally scoop the bees by the handfuls into the hive.  If you look closely at the picture, you'll notice a handful of bees falling into the hive.

Todd then shook the branch to get the remainder of the bees to fall in. 

We hoped they'd be happy in this new home we provided for them.  We planned to move this hive to a permanent location in our yard once the bees were settled. 

With the thousands and thousands of bees we got in the new hive, we most likely did not get the queen since they all quickly left.  They returned right back to their original hive, but landed on the outside for awhile before going back in. 

Since we now knew there were probably two queens in our hive, they would swarm again soon (maybe even the next day).  We also knew it was unlikely we would be lucky enough to see where the swarm landed in order to try and catch them again, so Todd split the hive.  He divided the boxes and the bees into two different hives.  Hopefully the bees will be confused enough by their new location that they won't swarm.  They also will each have more room to expand.  Best case scenario is that we got one queen in each new hive, but if not the hive missing a queen should make a new queen for themselves.  We'll just have to wait and see what happens.

As I get this ready to post, I realize this doesn't sound or look nearly as impressive as it really was.  I was glad Todd was already on his way home when it happened, but I was bummed the kids were at school and missed it all. 

We still have a lot to learn about beekeeping, but it sure is fascinating!