Plain Talk: Predicting Swarms (232)

Episode 232 – Plain Talk: Predicting Swarms

[music]

Jim Tew: Hey, listeners. I'm back in the bee yard where I-- I can't tell you a fib, I have really enjoyed the weather changing and being back with my bees. My wife is sick for a long time, and I had to take some time off. It's just really, really good to be back. This discussion may never be a podcast because I don't know how it's going to end. While I was not taking care of bees, yes, I had some colony deaths, there's some interesting activity around one of the empty sets of equipment that's still set up.

I'm going to lay down the infrastructure for what might happen or what might not happen. I'm going to talk about, is this a pre-indication of a swarm moving in. Listeners, I'm Jim Tew, and I come to you once a week where I talk about something to do with simple, plain talk beekeeping.

Introduction: 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: Listeners, I've had this discussion before, I've written articles about it, it's not easy to tell the difference between robber bees and scout bees. I suspect, at one time or another, the same bee can be either. There's a stack of equipment, there's actually four deeps, and I know that several years ago, there was honey here. This was a full-blown roaring beehive last year, so it must have had a varroa collapse, I don't know what's inside.

That's an interesting thought. Should I open it up and clean the dead bees out? Will that make it more enticing if these are scout bees? Now I'm off my own subject. What I'm describing to you are bees, a small number. At any given time, there's five to eight. They fly to the setback. I've got this third deep pushed back. They're flying to that upper entrance, and they casually land and they go inside, and sometimes I can't tell-- All bees look alike. I can't tell if it's the same one coming out or different bees.

They go in for a while, they rummage around, they come back out, they go around and look at other cracks and crevices, just exploring. Here's one bee right now, just came in, flying up around the top of the hive, flying back to the front, just checking the area out. Listeners, I just think these are foragers, they're not robbers with that maniacal attitude. Maybe they're scouts that are scouting for a robbing site.

As I talk to you, there's the occasional odor of faintly fermented honey that comes out, and there's the requisite carpenter ants. Maybe it's not the most enticing area. If this is scout bees, then they're going to have to go back and sell this location to the other bees. I don't think that it's mine. I did do that split thing that I told you I was going to do. Maybe the halves that I split them into are considering swarming. Maybe it's just my bees, but that's okay. I'll take my bees to keep from losing a swarm.

Just right now, there's six bees that I can see, just flying here, flying there, landing on a crevice. That bee looks like she might have been going to collect some oleopropolis, but she's not. She's flying again, other bees, three bees, four bees right now. They're not robbers, they're not arguing with each other. What I wanted to do with this segment is lay down the beginning part, the scouting part, and then, happy day, happy day, if a swarm moves in, I would have been here before the activity started. Is the swarm going to move in? I really have no earthly idea.

At this point, it's a lot like watching paint dry. To watch six or seven, three to six to seven bees fly around, do this, do that, me describe it to you. I think we've done enough now. I just keep describing bees that have some interest in this, but they're not seemingly robbers. I really believe that they're scouting for a new home site. I'm going to stop here, and then I'm going to keep up with it, and I am going to open this equipment up and see if there's dead bees in an ant nest that I can get cleared out that might make it more enticing to new bee inhabitants. Until something else happens, if anything, I'm stopping here. Stand by, I don't know the future.

[music]

Betterbee: Swarm season's here, are you ready? Get the Colorado Bee Vac made just for Betterbee. The CBV, as beekeepers call it, is the top high-relocation vacuum out there. It's built to gently collect up to 10 pounds of bees with very little loss. Don't miss out, grab your Colorado Bee Vac today at betterbee.com. That's betterbee.com.

[bees buzzing]

Jim: [laughs] I was right. I'm back here a week later at the hive that I described to you that had so many scouts around it. I knew there was still some honey in this, so I came out every day for, I don't know, it must have been six days, and I had a look, and I just believed that they were coming. Now, I told you, when I talked to you last week in this first half of this segment, that the scouts were going to have to go back and convince the swarm, wherever this colony is, that this was a proper home site.

Just a few minutes ago, last week, but just a few minutes ago in the first half of this segment, I described these bees checking things out, being slow, being methodical, not acting like robbers, not having that insanity. Every day, I came out hoping, and every day, I came out disappointed. Still some disappointment because I wasn't here when they moved in. Yesterday, I took a one-day trip, I went down to Columbus, Ohio. It's about 100 miles from here, and I visited my daughter, went to some events last night with my granddaughters. I had a nice time. I came back this morning. I came right back out here. I was going to cut this tall grass.

I was tired of making excuses for you. I was tired of trying to explain in my article why my yard was so scruffy-looking. I came back out with a walk-behind string trimmer I've got, and I checked this colony right away. There was nothing there. I told myself, "Well, I screwed that up, there's nothing there. The first half of this segment was just for grins, it's not going to go anywhere."

As I was running that trimmer, I had to go around behind the colony for the first time, which is obscured. The front's readily visible. The back of it, you have to want to get to it, pass some old equipment, and whatever. I was cutting behind the colony, and there's a cloud of bees, not going in the front, but going in an old-- It's an old excluder. I don't know, you've got to be an old beekeeper to remember, but it's, I'm sorry, an old inner cover. You've got to be an old beekeeper to remember those old inner covers.

They came with a notch cut out, a cove cut out. I put that on two or three years ago, and I didn't really do anything else with that equipment. I put it on top for this strong colony to rob out. The strong colony has subsequently died, either the last winter or the winter before. Had to be last winter. Yes, last winter. They're going in the very top entrance in that old inner cover hole. That means that they're basically living in that top deep.

There's three deeps and a super, down below, that's essentially unoccupied. It looks like a nice enough swarm. All I can do is stand here and look at them. I had to put a veil on because I had one bee that didn't like me talking to you here in front of this hive. There's a lot of flight activity. I'm fairly convinced that they came in today or yesterday. I think it would have been earlier this morning because they look like a new swarm.

There's just all this flight activity around the colony. This is not robbing. This is clearly a swarm. I was right. It is so rare for me to be right about anything that the bees are doing. The interesting thing is that, with the rain and all the things that happened last week, it took the scouts about a week to do their thing wherever this nest was. I don't think it's my bees.

Now, you can't walk along and look at a beehive and say, "No, these bees are fine. They didn't swarm." You can't really do that. I split these colonies. It wouldn't be impossible for one of the strong halves to swarm, but I split them in half. Maybe the queen right half of those did go. I don't think that happened. I can't look at my bees and miss any activity. That's just me seeing what I want to see. I want to believe that, bless their heart, some other beekeeper lost that swarm.

There may be some wild nest somewhere, but I don't know. I don't know where they're coming from. I will add this comment. For the last three years, I've picked up at least one swarm. Last year was two, and the year before was three swarms. Listeners, you know what they did? I told you that I've been a minimalist beekeeper here for several years. What they were doing was moving in to deadouts. I didn't do anything. I didn't make a swarm trap. I didn't put lures in. I didn't do anything. I just left the colonies, the equipment there, until I could shake out the dead bees.

Then I was going to have to sweat out wax moths because they're going to come in. I just left. After the first year, I thought I'm going to start setting up equipment and just leave it out. I'm not going to try to put it up in a tree. I'm not going to get it off the ground. I'm not going to do anything because I'm not really able to get ladders out and get boxes up in trees.

I'd like to suggest that, for me, this has been working. Just leave empty equipment out. If you do it all summer, you're going to get wax moths. I've been leaving empty equipment out with honey in it. For the past three years, I've picked up six swarms. Two swarms a year average, with just doing minimal work. I don't see any pollen coming. That's another reason that I think they're still new. There's no pollen coming. There's excessive flight. This is a swarm. This is not robbing. What now? Nothing?

I'm not doing anything. I'm going to leave these bees alone. I'm going to let the queen get established. Let her get a little bit of brood in there and get them in a home-minded situation. I've got a lot of wind. I'm sorry for that. I've got a lot of wind blowing here. Someone just leave them alone. I'll do that thing I've been telling you about. I'll come back, I don't know, five days, a week from now. We'll open it up, have a look, and just confirm everything that's inside.

I don't know where they came from. I don't know how far away they went. I am disappointed that I missed their actual arrival. I conjectured a few minutes ago that I missed it, probably just by a few hours. It would have been so neat to be here with you when that swarm moved in. I can't look a gift horse in its mouth. I'll take whatever I can get. They're actively settling down.

When I open that colony up, I've got to cause them a lot of confusion because I want to turn it back into a beehive. I'll take it off the top. I'll put it directly on the bottom board. Then put proper tops on it and everything, and get rid of the other equipment that they're not in right now. It's just so pleasant when this happens, when you get free bees, and I did nothing for them.

I didn't have to drive someplace and get equipment out and go back the next day and pick them up. None of that. They came to me. In this yard, I've done it before. Many years ago, I was working in this very yard. I'm looking at where the hives were. Two trees fell during storms years ago and busted up everything and made a mess in my yard. That's one of the colonies that got fallen on by the tree.

I was working bees. I kept hearing what I thought was an airplane or something flying above me. Maybe a drone. I had to back out from under the apple tree that I'm standing under. I looked up to see what it was. It was a cloud of bees up top. Oh, maybe seven years ago, that swarm had pinpointed some empty equipment that was just sitting there. As I talk to you, that would have been another instance when that happened years ago. That would be another swarm that moved in. They specifically found that colony. They specifically moved in.

It was so dramatic watching them do that, watching that huge swarm in the air come right down to the box that the scouts had chosen. They didn't get confused. I didn't see any bees trying to go in the beehives that were right next to them on either side. They specifically went right to. Now I've got an airplane flying right over me. I'm near the airport. At least there's no lawnmowers today.

Those bees came right into that particular colony. I've always had a good time doing this, through the years. It helps me with the fact that I lose colonies. Last year, it was 30%. I did nothing, lost 30%. Losing 30% to 40% for beekeepers now is not uncommon. It just helps my feelings to pick up free bees. I feel like a beekeeper. Now I'll tell you, I've got one more colony than I had.

People say, "How many colonies you got?" I can say, right now, I've just got seven. To defend myself and my life, I've had 400. Right now, where I am in life, what I'm doing, and my age, I've got seven here. I've got other yards other places. I've got seven here where I'm talking about. It's a beautiful sight. I don't know what else to tell you. I don't know what else to tell you.

I would just love to open them up and see how strong it is. Based on the flight activity outside, I'm estimating 2 to 3 pounds. They're happy here. I hope they like their new home. I guess I'll quit. I've got to tell you, I'm just going to sit here and watch them for a while, and I'm going to finish cutting grass. I'm going to sit here and watch them for a while and just enjoy the moment of picking up bees by doing absolutely nothing.

I hope you have good luck too with swarms this year, and enjoy tinkering with swarms as much as I do. Especially getting them, not losing them. I'm Jim, telling you bye in this unique experience for me.

[bees buzzing]

[music]

[00:19:18] [END OF AUDIO]