What is a swarm? Well, if a queen runs out of places to lay eggs, and/or if the bees run out of places to put honey, then the hive will swarm. The queen and a portion of the workers will gather up and leave the old hive, settling on a nearby branch. They will send out scouts from there to look for a new home. In the meantime, the old hive makes a new queen, and continues on with life.
The swarm queen and workers are programmed at this point to make a new hive and stock it full of honey as fast as possible. This is important, since they are starting over from scratch! To help them in this endeavor, they have stuffed themselves so full of honey that they cannot get their stingers out!
An old rhyme goes:
A swarm in May is worth a bale of hay.A swarm in June is worth a silver spoon.A swarm in July isn't worth a fly.This is a comment on the value of a swarm at different times of the year. A swarm early in the year is a good thing, since the beekeeper can expect them to make lots of beeswax and honey. However, a swarm late in the year is not worth much, since the spring honeyflow is over, and they are running out of time to stock their new hive for the winter (hence are likely to die).
So, imagine my surprise when our bees swarmed on September 30 at the Maryland Renaissance Festival!
This was a Sunday, and the bees swarmed sometime around noonish. The hive had been congested, but the bees did not show any signs of making queen cells, and bees are genetically programmed not to swarm at this time of year, anyhow. Still, nobody ever said that bees "read the book".
The queen's wings were clipped. This is done in a manner similar to clipping a bird's wings, and for the same reason - so she cannot fly too far. Thus, when the bees swarmed, the queen came down to the same level as our customers!
Mind you, the customers were never in any danger. Bees only get aggressive when they are frightened, or when they are protecting their hive. When the swarm, they do not have a hive to protect, and like I mentioned above, the bees are so full of honey at this point that they cannot even get their stingers out. Still, it can be a bit unnerving for some people to walk through a cloud of bees.
Our workers came out from inside the booth, and formed a ring around the swarm as they were flying. We knew they would settle down within 20 minutes, but we weren't entirely certain where that would be. In the meantime, we tried to keep people from walking into the swarm. When it became obvious that people would not listen (you would not believe how many people
purposefully walked through the bees because they thought it was cool!), we called Security, and they put yellow security tape around our booth until the bees settled down. Even so, we had people lift up the tape, walk underneathe, poke at the bees, and ask us what the bees were doing!
Anyhow, eventually the bees settled down, and we set up a curtain around them to protect them from curious eyes. Once the dust settled, we took down the security tape (with Security's blessing), and proceeded with the remainder of the day. Once night fell, we brought an empty hive in and literally grabbed handfuls of bees and placed them in the hive. They thought it was a cool home, night was falling (they fly by sight, so need daylight in order to fly), and stayed put.
To make a long and exciting story short - the old hive is now ensconced at home and being well-fed so they can survive the winter, we brought in a weaker hive to replace the display at the Festival, nobody was stung, and lots and lots of people were educated about the gentleness of honeybees!
(As a side note - the new display was also a late swarm that was mite infested and was unlikely to survive on its own. By placing it in the display, we can treat them for mites, feed them heavily, and hopefully they will survive the winter.)
Labels: late swarm, maryland renaissance faire, swarm
