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Honeybee Swarms

Click to see a swarm resting around a tree trunk

A "swarm" is a large percentage of the honeybees in a colony (half or more) that have left their hive with the old queen and departed to form a new colony. A swarm is a temporary grouping of bees, usually about the size of a football, and usually hanging somewhere in the open, such as from a tree branch, as shown here. Swarms usually leave for a permanent location within a few days, but occasionally they remain and form a permanent colony where they originally settled.

Honeybees detect the need to swarm and start a new colony for one or more of the following reasons:

The colony is too congested in their current hive. There is not enough room for the queen to lay more eggs and/or for the worker bees to store more honey and pollen in the honeycomb.
The queen has become weak with age, so she is not laying enough eggs or giving off enough pheromone scent to properly control the colony. This condition may also trigger supersedure, which does not usually result in swarming.
The queen is missing, possibly due to sloppy beekeeper practices, such as "rolling the queen", where the beekeeper kills the queen by rolling her between hive or comb surfaces when working the hive.
Prolonged periods of bad weather (rainfall, etc.) restrict the bees to the hive and cause congestion and lack of foraging activity.
The queen is genetically defective, which can inactivate nurse bees, cause a higher genetic tendency to swarm, lower queen pheromone production, or cause poor egg-laying activity or sporadic egg-laying, resulting in an uneven distribution of honeybee castes. This condition may also trigger supersedure, which does not usually result in swarming.
Poor ventilation, resulting in higher-than-normal moisture levels or temperatures inside the hive
Lack of food or water supply
Disease or pest infestation; these conditions may also trigger supersedure, which does not usually result in swarming.

Hives tend to swarm less in the first year than in subsequent years, since the hive is less populated and the queen is younger (if the colony originated from a package or a swarm was requeened). Beekeepers need to practice methods of swarm control more carefully in the second and subsequent years a colony is installed in a particular hive.

Swarms of bees are much more docile and less prone to sting when they are collected in a swarm. They are not living in a hive when they are in a swarm, and therefore have no home to defend, nor are any bees serving as guard bees. The primary function of a swarm is to protect the queen until scout bees can find a location suitable for a new hive, or until a beekeeper installs the swarm in a hive.

Supersedure rarely results in swarming. If a colony is superseding a queen, they will construct several queen cells on one or more brood frames, in the middle or near the top of the frame. If a colony is preparing to swarm, it will build many more queen cells, called swarm cells, nearer to the bottom of the frames.

dividing
Honeybees and their Life
requeening
supersedure