Plain Talk: Mystery Swarm (246)

Episode 246 – Plain Talk: Mystery Swarm

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Jim Tew: Listeners, it's Jim. I'm here under bee battlefield conditions today. A classic example of thinking you've got your day laid out, and then the bees change everything. Should be writing and finishing an article and submitting it, but nope. I came out here to get some gear I needed for a groundhog problem. I have a chronic groundhog problem in my bee yard and around my house.

When I opened the back door, yes, I found a swarm of bees. Isn't it ironic that just in a session that will be aired soon, where I talked to Anne Frey about a late season swarm, and I made the comment that I didn't have any this year. Well, now I do.

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If you've got some time, I'd like to spend a few minutes telling you what a bizarre situation this swarm has put me in. If you can, stand by and if you've got any advice on what you would have done if you had this thing, I wouldn't mind hearing about it. Just so we're clear, listeners, I'm Jim Tew. I come to you about once a week here at Honey Bee Obscura, where I always try to talk about something to do with plain talk beekeeping.

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Intro: Welcome to Honey Bee Obscura brought to you by Growing Planet Media, the producers of the Beekeeping Today podcast. Join Jim Tew, your guide through the complexities, the beauty, the fun, and the challenges of managing honeybees. Jim hosts fun and interesting guests who take a deep dive into the intricate world of honeybees. Whether you're a seasoned beekeeper, or just getting started, get ready for some plain talk that'll delve into all things honeybees.

Jim: You have to be where I am mentally to know why this is a surprise. I've already mentioned that Anne and I talked about late season swarms. Just so you'll know, it's August the 12th right now. I mean, what in the world can a bee colony possibly have in mind to swarm this time of the year? Yet, here's a swarm. The story starts like this, so I can draw in your mind.

About two weeks ago, the fellas that I've hired to cut my grass, in my old age, I've really become lazy. I've got all kind of mowers and trimmers and devices. What I don't have is energy. Three young men come out here, and in 40 minutes can do what it takes me two and a half hours to do, and they do a better job. When their big equipment flying all over my acre, he flagged me down and he said, "You've got a yellowjacket nest over here."

Unbeknownst to me, near my front door was yellowjackets coming out of the ground. I had no idea they were there. I told them just to mow around them, and don't worry about it. They would clear up. Well, chapter two is here. As my family was leaving my house the night before, they called me to tell me that I had all kind of skunks. Three or four or five skunks running around my house, and in the vicinity of my front yard.

I thought, "Well, they're out there. I'm in here, so life goes on." That was the end of that. The next day, after the guy pointed out that yellowjacket nest to me, it had been excavated by skunks. It had been brutally excavated. They had dug down 10 inches. There were a few yellowjackets flying around. I had an interest in that. The next morning, I had a look again, and the hole was slightly bigger. This time, the yellowjacket nest was gone. Isn't that interesting, listeners? That skunks that are a pest in a bee yard, actually, ended up being good guys, and eradicated that yellowjacket nest for me. That was the mental impression that I had.

Then, I found out that I've got yet another groundhog, who's insistent on living under my back porch. That simply can't happen, because you get one, and then just in a short time, you get many, and they dig down against the footer of the house, and they cause me problems. I was trying to deal with that. I came back here, and just to check everything, I opened the back door of the barn to have a look at the quietness, and solitude in my bee yard. There, coming out at the base of the door, the man door, the human door, was yellowjackets.

I thought, "Well, go figure. Here's another yellowjacket nest," because they were flying all around. I stood there for a second, and I thought, "Well, there's bees mixed in with the yellowjackets." Then, listeners, I realized, no, it's all bees. It's a bee swarm right here underneath my door. It's important that you know that the barn sits on six-inch square timbers on a gravel pad.

If you ever put a barn down, you need to go the extra mile, and put down a cement pad, because over time, my barn has sunk, or has sunken, whichever word is correct, into that pad, so that now, instead of being six inches off the ground, it's hardly two, at the most, three inches off the ground. Listeners, why would a bee swarm choose to go underneath that barn through a two-inch slit along the bottom of the door, and get under what must be no more than about a four-inch cavity, and that cavity is probably 24 feet long? It's a terrible place to bivouac.

Now, I ask you this. Are these bees actually bivouacking, or did they nest here? At this point, I don't know. I can't tell. Here's my conundrum. If I smoke them, I'm just going to force them farther back in that long cavity between the two timbers. The two timbers are separated probably by three or four feet, so it's a wide, open space underneath there. I don't know where I'm at in this discussion exactly, but it's late in the season, and the last thing I was expecting was a swarm.

I don't have good combs to offer them. I don't have any reward. I don't have a nice swarm box set up. I've got some old, ugly frames with some old comb on it, some wax moth damage. If I were bees, I wouldn't be eager about it, but it's all I've got. I've got a 6 frame nuc with three combs in it. I've tried to pull them out with the handle of a bee brush. They're scenting everywhere in a confused fashion, so I can't get that classic scent feel set up toward the box.

Not knowing what else to do, I thought I would try to bribe them. I got an old jar of honey out of the shop, and I dribbled honey on the entrance of the 6 frame nuc, and I dribbled some honey inside. I caused immediate and profound excitement. When I opened the door, I thought they were flighty. After I realized they were bees, I thought it may very well be that this is a mating swarm, and they're unstable.

They've got a virgin queen in there, and they're acting flighty and weird. That's where I am. Listeners, I can't even tell you how big the swarm is. There's decent flight around me here, but I can't tell if this is a one-pound swarm, or a three-pound swarm. I can't see anything through that narrow crevice between the ground and the barn. I'm going to keep dribbling honey. The scent field they've got set up is the wrong way. It's going back toward the cluster.

When I open the honey, as I'm doing now, to try to dribble honey where they can get to it, then I have an immediate problem keeping the bees out of the honey. I'm dribbling again. I'm going to open the colony up, and see if I can keep enticing them to go in to at least see the dirt cavity that at one time had the odor of bees wax. I'm trying to do what I told you not to do. I don't want to rush over and open a colony, and upset it, and take brood out.

Listeners, what else can go wrong? The honey just spilled. I'm not in control here. I am completely caught off guard. This is not what I planned to be working on today. I've got some bees matted on the front about the size of a baseball. I've got hundreds of bees eating the honey at the landing board. I poured some honey on a cardboard strip I put down to make a ramp from the cluster that I can just see the outer edge of up to the landing board of the nuc.

What else should I do? Let me add one last thing. I'm sitting in the sun, and it must be, against the back of this barn, it must be 96 degrees. I'm sweating so much that I can barely see. Let's take a break and hear from my sponsor, and primarily give me a chance for a break.

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Jim: I didn't want to do it, but I think that I'm going to have to light a smoker, and see if the cluster will break up and move out, instead of moving farther back. Before I do that, I'm going to open the nuc box, and dribble some more honey down inside it. What do I see inside the nuc box? There's a few bees in there. There's honey still there from where I dropped it. They haven't fluently taken the bait on that.

I've got bees all over my honey jar. Not all over it, but more bees than I want. There's not one thing, there's something else. That's where I am. Can I give you a review? It's mid-August. I got a swarm in an impossible position, in a narrow slit beneath a utility barn that sits on six-inch timbers. They're going in between the ground pad, which is a pressure-treated wood, and the barn in about a two-inch slit. I have no idea how large the swarm is.

It's late season anyway. Anne and I felt like that it's not really a lot of value. This swarm's not going to be able to do much anyway. I had to try, though, right? For the 10th or 12th time, I wanted to use the bee brush to scoop out the bees that I can, put them on the entrance of the nuc. There's gentle flight. There's mixed scenting. To make a bad situation worse, I'm reading a book Tom Seeley wrote, and I'm doing this from memory.

Boisterous Bees and Buzz-Runners. It's an interesting book. He's summarizing a lot of the research work that he's done, and adding some new work to it. He said, "If you see that buzz-run dance, that the swarm is getting ready to leave." I've seen some of that. I see bees doing the dorsal, ventral, abdominal, vibrational dance. These bees are active. I don't know that they're planning on staying here a lot longer.

Tom said-- I should say Dr. Seeley said, "To mist them with water." By the time I go get a mister and cool them down, because they've got to be at the right temperature, but I can't believe that these bees are not at the right temperature, as hot as it is, to take off if they want to go. I can't stop them from scenting the wrong way. They keep scenting back toward the cluster. Let me take a break, see what I'm going to do here, and I'll come back, and tell you how this is going, or tell you how it's not going. This story may not have a happy ending.

All right, I'm back. I tried for about 10 minutes. Nothing happened. I had to go light the smoker. All right, a few puffs, seeing if I can convince them to come out, instead of running the other way. Give it a while to work. I got to tell you, listeners, they keep scenting the wrong way. They keep scenting back toward the cluster. There's no way to rake anything under the barn to pull them out. Even if I had a vacuum, they're just going to vacuum up leaf litter and gravel, and whatever under there. Listeners, I'm just sitting here watching, so I'm going to sign off for a few minutes and see what happens here.

Listeners, I'm back at the same time that an airplane decided to fly over. It's a busy place back here in the bee yard. Here's an update. I've been here about two hours. It's been beekeepingly entertaining. What I've learned so far, or been forced to relearn, is that as beekeepers, we can only suggest. We can't require. This has not been a textbook swarm at all. It's in a horrible place. I don't have a decent bait box for them.

They seem confused. There's conflicting scenting patterns. There's a lot of dancing going on. The dorsal, ventral, abdominal, vibrational dance has been a buzz-runner or two going through. If I had to guess, the queen is still underneath the barn. I'm supposed to know something about bees, but these things have just been, for lack of a better word, an atypical swarm. It's the wrong time of the year.

There's absolutely not a single drone. What does that mean, listeners? These are all workers and, I guess, a queen under the barn. That's where it is. I'll check back in one more time. Here's the bottom line. At some point, you just give up. Give it your best shot. If they're still hard-headed about it, you just give up. Stand by. I'll come back in a few minutes.

Beekeepers, I'm back. You don't know that I've been gone, but I would --Just left them to their own devices. I told myself, "You've got to be patient." I left them for about an hour and a half. I went back to the shop. I did some other things that needed to be done. When I came back out, I don't know how else to word this. These bees have no idea what they're doing.

I have never seen such a bee mess. Do I want to say in my life? I don't think I've ever seen such a bee mess with what must be two or three pounds of bees. The whole time today, I've been watching for the queen. Of course, if I had found her, I would have told you straight away. I'm doing a podcast here, where I admit that I don't know what these bees are doing, or have done, or are planning to do.

They're basically scattered over about a nine-square-foot area. Just bees here, bees there, bees flying, bees scenting, bees doing a breaking dance, bees on the ground back under the barn. I guess they're going to end up back under the barn. That seems to be the general consensus. I don't know how to end this, other than to say that I'm going to go get some dinner.

All right, I got to quit this. I don't have a clue how long this piece is, because I've taken all afternoon to do it. I've enjoyed the experience. I've been intrigued by it. I have been challenged by the fact that you don't always know what the bees are doing, and this has been one of those days. Of course, if I have the chance, I will tell you how this ends, but I suspect these bees are going to leave, and go their own way sooner or later. Until we talk again, I'm Jim telling you, I don't know what these bees are doing.

Listeners, an epilogue. I suspect if you've listened to this point, you'd like to know what happened. About a week ago, a lot of time has passed now, there was a heavy rain shower coming in while the swarm was still tucked beneath the barn, just barely out of the weather. It was going to be a pretty good thunderstorm, and there were weather warnings out. As the rain began to patter, I thought I'd go back and see if the bees were at least out of the rain.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the bees had gone into my box. There was not a single bee remaining under the barn. Before we all get agog, it was still an odd swarm. It was still poorly formed. The bees were still scattered all over. There was still some scenting and some dancing. While I complimented myself for finally enticing the bees in, another one of me inside me said, "These bees don't look stable." By now, the rain was really beginning to come down. Just so you know, it rained about an inch and a quarter in about 40 minutes. It really flooded.

The next day was Sunday. I did have the thought that day of wondering if those bees moved into the box, because they were going to go through this rain shower. They were making preparations for it. I don't know. The fact remains, the bees moved into the box. At least, for the storm. You know what happened? I went out on Monday morning to have a check. There were oddly two bees in the box. Why did just two bees stay? I don't know.

The rest of the bees were gone. As I look back and I bounce all the rubble, and all this time with you that I've spent, I hope it wasn't wasted for you and me both. This must have been a swarm headed by a virgin queen. That's my idea that I like the best. Alternatively, the idea I don't like all that much, is that it was a swarm without a queen at all.

Each question answer begets yet another question. Then, which colony did it come from here? These are all big, booming August colonies. I just have no interest in opening them up to see if one's undergoing a queen replacement process. That part of the problem is going to be unresolved. Number one, I do support the notion that a virgin queen swarm is hard to control. It was a small swarm. It was only about a pound.

Secondly, I was reminded that the bees don't always do what you want them to do. You really want those stories you can write articles about, and do podcast about successful endings, but sometimes the bees do their own thing. These bees steadfastly throughout this entire caper did their own thing. I did enjoy it. I was intrigued working with them.

I was frustrated that it taxed my bee management ability. I suppose I was like a physician who was at the limits of his or her ability. You just can't do anything else, and I couldn't do anything else. They're off in the wild blue, yonder. I don't know where they are, or what they're doing. I do know this, I really appreciate you listening. I hope that you learned something.

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You could have offered some advice. You could have said something that I could have done differently, but I did the best I could. Thanks for listening. I look forward to talking to you next week. I'm Jim telling you bye.

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