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Honeybee Swarm

Konrad___far_north

20 years ago

One of my hives swarmed! [My first one]

This one was a treat to collect, nice and low to the ground!

Konrad

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Comments (14)

gmom74
20 years ago
Good gracious! Great picture!
My grandfather used to keep bees and he would get all covered up with netting and go out and rob the hives. We always had plenty of honey.
clairdo2
20 years ago
SCARY...
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We have 34 rose bushes in the yard—the high end ones with big 4-5½ inch blooms, and fragrant. Bees love these flowers, and they also bring the bigger bumble bees. Unfortunately the blooms on each bush only last a few days and do not appear very often, so although bees do love the flowers, I am not sure how well a rose bush keeps them around. There is always at least 1 or 2 blooms somewhere in the yard though. We have a big rose geranium (unrelated to roses) bush that, and although the flowers are very small, there are plenty of tiny little purple flowers on the plant for most of the year. I can see a few bees collecting among the tiny little flowers, but I do not think the plant has much nectar and the bees do not stay very long, so it does not seem to be their preferred flower species. The bees really seem to like the big fragrant hybrid tea roses, where they can get into the stamens in the center of the flower. Some of the floribunda blooms are just too compact and the bees cannot get into the center. The bees also like the orange and lemon blossoms, but the trees only blossom once a year. There will also be many bees buzzing around in the pepper tree when it sends out its tiny blossoms (not really a flower). I cannot imagine the bees really like these blossoms, but it is a huge tree so it attracts many bees—too many in fact. One more thing I have noticed, the bees seem to be very tranquil around the roses, they will rest in each rose for a long time and take their time resting, not really buzzing around from flower to flower so much. It makes me feel more comfortable to be around the bees when they are not flying everywhere.
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I'm not sure about that EcoWatch article. Haven't heard anything about this pesticide or it's government approval. Almost every pesticide used is generally approved on the basis of safety for pollinators, but that doesn't always prevent the deaths. Here's an article from Ohio State University about this matter. This is one of the first, which I have seen, which absolutely rings true to me. It describes how the testing fails to address the very important matter of how residuals affect brood, and it tells how economics encouraged farmers to throw in pesticides, when spraying for fungal diseases, "just to be safe" and save money. Ohio State Article on Bee Deaths in Almond Groves Dbarron, you might have a point ;) Also, how one approaches a hobby has a lot to do with how the family perceives it. While the children were in our home I included them, to whatever degree they desired. They delighted in extracting honey and my wife taught them things like making candles with beeswax. If I was too fanatical, hurting them either by neglecting them, for the sake of my hobby, or even being abusive if they did something which might be perceived to harm the hobby, they would have grown up resenting it. I'll never forget, years ago, when I mentioned to a peer how much I love to garden. Her father had been a fanatical gardener who did it wrong. With no warning she flew into a rant about how she hated gardening and that her father loved his plants more than his kids. I never forgot that.
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doris_mi5
20 years ago
Have never seen a swarm like that. How do you collect them?
catlady15
20 years ago
OH MY that looks so so scarey.If my dad was living he would love to see this pic.He raised bees and we had honey but I stayed far far away.I hate sorry to use this word but I guess the word would be I am afraid of bees and I can not stand them around me.I freak out but this pic is just amazing and have never seen so many bees in my life.Judy
JoanMN
20 years ago
Wow, what a mass of bees!
socks
20 years ago
Does that mean some of the bees left to start a new hive, but they stayed nearby so you can collect them and start a new hive with them now? Have they taken the queen with them?
juanital
20 years ago
Wow!
Konrad___far_north
Original Author
20 years ago
Thank you all!
And sorry for late answer!...... very busy.

>>Have never seen a swarm like that. How do you collect them?

First, have a empty bee box ready with some frames, gently, with a bee brush and a container brush them in, hope the queen is in, then dump into the bee box.
There was no need to scoop up all the bees, ones you have the queen, the other bees are walking into the box by themselves. [It went very well]

>>Does that mean some of the bees left to start a new hive, but they stayed nearby so you can collect them and start a new hive with them now? Have they taken the queen with them?

The old queen usually takes off with perhaps half of the bees from the hive. The hive has some new queen cells, ready to hatch, so when the first queen appears, she
will kill all the other emerging queens. Then she has to go to a mating flight and mate with several drones [male] bees. Hopefully return to the hive, not being eaten by a bird! LOL

When they swarm, they usually settle first on a near by tree or shrub for a short time, [perhaps one day] then they are looking for a permanent home!
They have accepted the new home I have given them!
In about 2 to 3 weeks, I should know, by checking the old hive, if there is new eggs in there??
If so, I have a brand new queen, good for about 3 years.
Konrad
socks
20 years ago
We had a swarm of bees take up residence in a planter box in the yard. A beekeeper came with a hive and left it near the swarm. At the end of the day, all the bees went in the hive, and he came and picked it up. I think he put some kind of attractant in the hive so they would go in it.

So interesting! Thanks for sharing, Konrad.
onewheeler
20 years ago
That is very interesting. I love bees, they are beautiful creatures. I believe that not much would grow in this world if we lost our bees, they are precious.

Thanks for answering those questions, it was interesting. Someday that might be a hobby I will take up, when I retire that is. As I said, I love bees.

Valerie
Konrad___far_north
Original Author
20 years ago
Thank you all!
I wanted to let you see the hived swarm,...and more. I made this picture to show what can happen ones in a while, for me, I have seen this the first time ever!!...allot of bees coming out of the hive, [looking like they would swarm], not so, sometimes there is a large amount of "new bees" going out of the hive for there first orientation flight, this is what happend today, in about 10 min. it was all over and most bees went inside again.
Also, sometimes after long periods of rainy day's, the bees can't go out and relief themselves, called cleansing flight, and when nice weather returns, it could also look
like this.
Konrad
netla
20 years ago
Great pictures. The first one looke like some kind of bee sculpture.
cherbo
20 years ago
Wow both are great shots!
onewheeler
20 years ago
that second picture is amazing, shows the bees in action, good you got to witness this while it was happening.

valerie

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