Keep a lid on swarms this spring: Tips
Spring is early in many parts of Australia, and springtime for honey bees means swarming.
For beekeepers, this means swarm management is likely to be required.
Beekeepers should actively take steps to reduce swarming, or otherwise lose their valuable queen and around half the worker bee population to a departing swarm.
What's so bad about swarming anyway?
Swarming is how a bee hive reproduces itself, but it also drastically reduces the amount of honey the hive is able to produce that season.
Swarming can be risky if your hive doesn't successfully requeen itself and you don't have access to a replacement queen.
Swarming may put your neighbours offside and it could weaken your hive to the point where small hive beetles would gladly infest and overrun it.
Additionally, now that we have Varroa mite establishing in NSW, any new swarm sent out into the environment is now an unmanaged hive that may become a source of Varroa mites and reinfestation to nearby managed hives.
Swarming is a result of several things.
Some bees are genetically more likely to swarm than others.
Older queens are more likely to swarm than younger queens.
Environmental conditions and what's happening in the hive make it more likely to swarm too.
When the hive population reaches a tipping point, when there's a large enough population of adult bees and lots of brood, lots of stored food in the hive and lots of nectar and pollen in the environment, bingo, it's swarming time.
The following management tools can help to prevent swarming and save you potential headaches.
PREVENT SWARMING
- Place empty honey supers (boxes) on hives to give more internal space
- Replace the existing old queen with a new queen you've raised or purchased. (Tip: If you clip the queen's wings, which doesn't damage her or decrease her lifespan, she won't be able to swarm far and you can re-catch her and the swarm or it may return by itself)
- Make a split (artificial swarm): remove part of the hive (frames of honey, brood, bees) to start a new hive. The new hive could be started in a nucleus box or full depth box, depending on the population strength, brood and food quantities in the original hive to be split. Replace removed frames with empty frames or foundation frames. A new queen or cell can be placed in hives as required
- If hives are disease free, frames of capped brood can be removed from very populous hives and introduced into less populous hives in the same apiary. It's a good idea to keep a record of where frames are moved between hives in case you find disease down the track, this will allow you to undertake tracing for the source of the bee disease.
Remember if you catch a swarm, you should monitor it for Varroa and update your registered hive numbers accordingly.
Up to date beekeeper and bee hive registration numbers are valuable for government, the beekeeping industry and other industries that need bees.
If an exotic pest is found, accurate beekeeper contact details are critical, allowing your state or territory government to notify and keep you informed.
You can find out how to register in your area through the Bee Aware website at beeaware.org.au.
- Liz Frost is the Technical Specialist, Honey Bees for the NSW Department of Primary Industries
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