Some of you have been with us long enough to remember that our first year we had a late season swarm. It was a fairly small swarm, but to my inexperienced eyes it looked like a biblical plague. I bring this up because on the day I had chosen to harvest honey a couple months ago I woke up, poured myself a cup of coffee, and stood looking out the window reflecting, “wow, they’re very active this morning. WAY more active than usual...I haven’t seen them that active since they swwaaaarrrrrrr. OH NO!

I don’t know if there is a convenient time for a keeper’s hive to swarm, but this day was particularly inconvenient. I guess that hive I had not got the update that I was taking supers off, although to be(e) fair to them I had been meaning to do maintenance for two plus weeks for just this reason. If my first swarm had seemed apocalyptic, this one was universe ending!  In my relatively short time keeping I have never seen so many bees in the air at one time. My estimate is that approximately 20k bees left the hive with the old queen, looking for a new place to nest.

I am just experienced enough to know that a swarm is not actually that hard to catch once they’ve landed.  They are hella frightening to witness but are actually at their least territorial while swarming, do to their lack of a home or resources. Unfortunately, after circling like a tornado of bees for about 15m, this swarm decided to hunker down on a branch 23’ up my neighbor’s tree. Hhmmmm, we’re going to need a taller ladder for this!

So a swarm will find a safe and convenient place to land together, and then they’ll send out scouts to find the most ideal and local place to move. So once they’re clustered on the tree, I’m on the clock before the storm of bees moves down the street potentially in full view of my neighbors or thru crowded traffic. Fortunately I am a member of both the Cumberland County and Maine Beekeepers’ Associations, and I was able to reach out to 100+ beekeepers with a single email.

It took a good portion of the day to find someone who could both catch the swarm, and do so at 23’ in the air. Eventually the vice president of the CCBA who does tree work came with ropes, harnesses, and a new home for our wayward bees. Swarms can, in fact, be a beekeepers best friend as once they are caught they are a new colony at no cost.

So the lesson in all of this is that I simply MUST monitor my hives every 10 days or so to prevent swarming, which generally means preventing the creation of a new queen. While this year I expanded on my beekeeping into honey production and queen rearing, next year I hope to add my name to the list of local beekeepers who will respond to a swarm. In the meantime, I’ll be carefully knocking queen cells out of my hives.

Thank you so much, and join us next time on HWHftH. I’m The Boxing Beekeeper.