Why Do Honey Bees Swarm?
The queen honey bee produces a pheromone which encourages worker bees to build comb, forage and look after the brood. As the queen gets older her pheromone output diminishes. Due to this pheromone reduction, or when the colony just gets too big, some of the bees lose contact with the queen. When this happens these bees then start to create a new queen since they know how vital a queen is to the survival of the colony.
There can only be one queen in the nest/hive so before the new queen emerges the old queen takes off with anything from a few thousand bees to a few tens of thousands of bees!
Swarm Prevention
Here is a summary of the main swarm control methods:
Remove the Queen (Keeper Re-Queens)
Description
Destroy all queen cells, remove the queen and re-queen.
Advantages
Queen quality is managed.
Honey crop not impinged.
No extra hardware.
Disadvantages
Colony size remains so could still be chance of swarming.
Remove the Queen (Bees Re-Queen)
Description
Remove queen and destroy all bar two queen cells and leave colony to re-queen.
Advantages
Less likely to swarm again than keeper re-queening
Disadvantages
Colony growth and honey crop disrupted.
New queen might not mate well.
Artificial Swarm
Description
Queen, fresh foundation, foragers and supers stay in place, brood and young bees moved to side.
Advantages
Honey crop maintained.
Can re-queen through uniting with “swarmed” colony if desired.
Disadvantages
Requires additional hardware (essentially 2 hives).
Shook Swarm Using Taranov Board
Description
Ramp placed in front of hive with 4 inch gap to hive. Bees on frames shaken onto sheet over ramp. Foragers return to hive and brood with 2 x Queen Cells, queen and young bees cluster under board. Cluster is the “swarm” which is hived.
Advantages
Splits colony into swarm relatively easily.
Minimal hardware.
Disadvantages
Break in brood.
New Queen may not mate well.
Snelgrove
Description
Same as Artificial Swarm except the existing colony is placed above Snelgrove board above supers, flying bees are bled from parent to swarm colony.
Advantages
Control over flying bees and maintain foraging activity less hardware required.
Simpler to reunite.
Disadvantages
Timing is crucial.
Demaree
Description
Similar to Snelgrove except board not used, queen, frame of brood and new foundation in bottom box, QE, then supers and 2nd QE, original brood with QCs torn down, as brood emerges it will go down to bottom box.
Advantages
No special hardware required.
Simple.
No loss of crop.
Disadvantages
Only prevents colony swarming for 14-21 days, time to think!