I went out around 7 AM to the apiary to feed the new girls some sugar syrup and saw this on the front of one of my hives. Is it a start of a build up for them to get ready to swarm? I have seen them do this when it gets very hot here but the temps are cool in the 60's this morning and very cloudy. If they swarm I hope it is to one of my traps!
Are they cramped for space? I wouldn't think so this time of year. Maybe they have a second queen and ARE ready to swarm. I thin k that means your old queen needs replaced.
ReplyDeleteGS..they very well could be cramped. I put extra supers on a few weeks ago because there was brood everywhere. It is my intentions of straightening out honey frames from brood frames this next week. We are already having our honey flow and it is swarm season. I don't have any luck when I've tried to split my hives. I am hoping that they go to one of my traps when they do swarm and save me the trouble of splitting. The DOA encourages our queens to be replaced yearly because of the African bees. So far I do not have any aggressive bees so I have not done so. I have found hatched queen cells and destroyed queen cells so they are taking care of replacing the queen on their on as far as my knowledge goes and that is not a whole lot....LOL
DeleteWere they doing the wash board wave pattern thing? I have never read or seen any outside indicator of a hive that is about to swarm other than it starts spitting bees out in a stream and when ya see that it's already going on.
ReplyDeleteI always let my bees swarm. I have tried to stop them too many times and had them swarm anyway. These days I figure keeping bees is like dating women. It's easiest to just let em do what they want to do and try and prepare for the best way to handle it than it is to force em into doing what you want them too.
I found the headaches are a lot less just like it was when dating :)
Preppy...You are in rare form! If keeping bees is like dating then I guess I am with you. I went to a class on making splits to keep my bees from swarming and they still swarmed and I also lost the bees in the nucs where I put the splits. I am just going to try to catch swarms and re-establish them in a new hive. I am going to let them be bees!
ReplyDeleteI don't know about the wash board wave pattern thing. Just what I showed in the picture. I don't know what was going on out there. They were flying a few at a time to the trap I hung back up. Not the swarm I just caught but from a different hive. Papa bear said the air was full of bees. I have not had a chance to go check them.
Well, I've never seen bee traps and think it a very clever idea! Whether your bees are swarming or not, I know you'll learn something about bees!
ReplyDeleteLeigh...I am constantly learning with the bees. It's like most things. What works for one does not necessarily work for another. If these swarmed after I left them, they did not go into one of my traps.
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