Swarm Season

A bucket full of bees!

Last week, while the kiddos were away on spring break, exciting things were happening in the Oxbow neighborhood. In sync with the arrival of spring, honeybees started swarming! We were very fortunate to notice a swarm resting in a tree near campus, and were even more fortunate to capture the swarm and set it up in a new hive. Here we'll tell you the story of how it happened, and what it means when bees swarm.

Honeybees swarm when they have outgrown their hive and are ready to set up a new colony. Swarming generally happens in the spring when the weather warms up and the bees jolt into action. A hive prepares itself for swarming by raising a virgin queen, who will take over the hive while the old queen leaves to start the new one. When she's ready, the old queen takes flight, and, loyal to her pheromones, thousands of worker bees follow her. As they leave the hive together they form a fluid cloud searching for a place to land. Collectively, they amass somewhere safe and wait as scout bees make flights out and about in search of a suitable new home. This scouting search can take anywhere from hours to days, and while the bulk of the bees are waiting, they form an amorphous mass that can take on wild and beautiful shapes. This is what our swarm looked like, hanging from a tree on Third Street. 

If you can manage to capture a swarm, it's a great way to start a new hive. But catching a swarm can be a bit tricky, especially if it's waaaaay up in a tree like this one was. First we had to collect some tools and supplies. Among them were five-gallon buckets, into which we put some pieces of wax comb. The comb is there to attract the bees--its feel and smell say "HOME!" to honeybees. 

Oh, we should mention that at this point we had also called our beekeeper buddies over at Napa Valley Bee Co. They are swarm-catching experts and knew just what to do. With the comb-baited bucket in hand, beekeeper Jason climbed a (very tall) ladder. He gently snuck the bucket under the mass of bees, and very slowly and patiently guided the swarm off the tree branch and into the bucket. This process took upwards of THREE HOURS. Let's just say that Jason is a Zen Bee Master. It was an amazing process to watch, and in the end, there were actually so many bees that we had to use a second bucket. This was an unusually large swarm!

After the swarm was secured into our two buckets, we whisked them over to our bee buddy's apiary where there was an empty hive box waiting for occupants. Setting up the bees in their new home was quite simple--we just gently dumped the bucket onto the hive frames! Recognizing that they were home, the bees quickly crawled down into the frames and started settling in. Very soon after arrival, the queen will have started laying eggs to populate the new colony.

Here are our girls in their new home! While they get established, we'll be preparing a new spot for the hive to live on campus. And we've planted a huge row of flowers over in the Back 40 to make sure they have plenty of forage this summer. Just a couple days ago we saw another swarm heading down Third Street, but it landed too far out of reach...it's busy bee season over here in Napa!