12/10/2022
It is bee swarm time again.
Swarming is one of the honey bee's key survival strategies, in addition to just raising more bees, they also have inbuilt strategies to spawn new hives.
A swarm is a mass of thousands of bees with a queen, and they have recently left the old home. They typically cluster in a tree, shrub, or anywhere really, and then send out scouts to find a new home. The ideal shelter/cavity/home is somewhere around 50-100 litres in volume, has good thermal characteristics (easy to control ventilation for summer and winter), has entrances that can easily be defended from intruders. Think hollow tree, wall cavity in a house, abandoned rubbish bins, stray wooden boxes, even mpost bins or abandoned styrofoam boxes. The bees can be very discerning, they can detect/infer "will this be hot in summer or cold in winter", or will this be hard to ventilate in hot weather, or hard to keep warm in winter.
If you see bees checking out cavities in your house walls or roof, it is likely there is a swarm nearby that is looking for a new home. I have seen this happen this year and last year – scout bees checking out wall cavities in houses. I have then re-housed the swarm in a new beehive, and once the swarm has a new home, the scouting for vacant cavities in nearby walls and roofs stops immediately.
The movie with this post shows the scout bees near a recent swarm site in White Gum Valley. It took a bit of time to convince the bees to go into the new hive, but once they did they were no longer interested in the wall of the house next door. All's well that ends well!
Caveat and warning – in the "what you can do if you see scout bees " category – plug up any access holes to your wall or roof cavities. If they do take the next step and “move in”, you have a few choices – you can live with them which usually works as long as the entrance to the hive is not near your doors or open windows (and best if the entrance is a few m above ground). You can use pesticides or contract exterminators etc – in my view pesticide extermination is a last resort and certainly less and less popular as we learn more about how bad pesticides can be. Perhaps the third alternative is what some call “bee rescue” – which involves opening the roof or wall cavity, and moving the established combs into a standard beehive. It is tricky and a lot of time from the beekeeper is required. Since this procedure is difficult, I’d very much recommend capture of the initial swarm or plugging up the entrances rather than just “hoping for the best”.
Get in touch if I/we can help!
