Swarming

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Nordic bees exhibit swarming behavior and when they begin to swarm, it is very hard to stop. The most common way to handle a swarming colony, is the so-called controlled swarming method. This means that the bees will be able to perform their natural swarming behavior, but the beekeeper will be able to control the swarm’s location. The most common way to do this is to split the swarming colony so that the old queen from the swarming hive is placed into a new nucleus. The swarming hive will grow a new queen from either existing swarm queen cells or a newly bred queen cell.

If the all the new queens are continuously produced from swarm queen cells, selection will lead to a high swarming tendency in all bee colonies in the course of a few years. As such, it is recommended that the new swarm cell queen should be changed to a bred queen later in summer.

The first stimulus in the year for swarming is the lack of space for egg laying; when for example the egg laying area is blocked by extra winter feed or spring honey.

During late May and June, the brood area usually expands very quickly. During that period, one of the most essential things to do for management is, again, to follow the bee colony’s swarming tendency. Eggs or half built queen cells can be detected by inspecting the brood area frame by frame. A faster, less precise way to detect the cells is to tilt the brood area box on the lower box and then control the lower edges of the brood frames.

How to detect and handle the swarming bee colony:

  • A laid queen cell cup is always an indication of swarming behavior.
  • If wax foundations have not been built, swarming has begun and vice versa.
  • If swarming behavior has clearly begun split the swarming hives so that the new hive will be formed with the queen from the old hive
  • Only two swarm cells should be left to develop while others should be removed.
  • The old hive will grow the new queen from a swarm queen cell.
  • The new queen from the queen swarm cell can be replaced with a bred queen either later in summer or during winter feeding in fall.