so here I was doing observation videos in this observation hive of a queen in
her Queen cell and I'm waiting for her to hatch and wouldn't you know it all of
a sudden the bees in the observation hive erupt into all of this activity so
if you don't know this yourself when the hive gets active like this which you're
about to experience is a swarm so these bees are headed out and often
they do swarm just before subsequent Queen's hatch out and that's what's
happening here so I turned off all my video gear pulled the lights to the side
and now we're just going to share what's going on through the observation hive to
show you what it looks like when workers swarm out with an older queen
now this observation hive is only been in use since let's say March or April so
there is still some brood here there is no open larvae and there are already
Queen cells of course that are capped so they're swimming out and here's the
opening it goes through the bottom there's a tube because of the exterior
and here's what the outside landing board looks like now if you weren't
paying attention to your beehives and you were somewhere else
this all happens very fast this entire video is only 12 minutes and I'm giving
it to you real time here this is what an interest looks like when bees are
swarming out and I'll get you in close so you can hear the buzzing it would be
that they come and go
now when they be swarm out wherever the Queen land that's where the formants
wand that's why you sometimes see them hanging on a tree branch or a fence post
or something else like that so we'll keep an eye out now that we know they're
swarming and I'm going to show you where they land and how they congregate and
you notice there are several trees in the back on here that are within 100
feet of the tribe and it's likely that they're going to go to one of these
trees ran down a branch and that will allow me to collect them and of course
put them in another hive body
I was hoping to catch the Queen flying out but it happened so fast
it's a hot day that's in the 80s we have a nectar flow coming in the goldenrod is
right now getting into bloom the answers are blooming and there's lots of pollen
out there so my resources were very strong before they started this swarm
and you can see even while most of the hive about 50% of the occupancy the type
of flying out they are still worth of these from the field they're coming in
with pulling on their legs
and now sure enough here's a blue spruce tree and we can see that they are
focusing their flight around this tree so we know that that green is going to
land on one of these branches and hopefully they'll land low enough that
we can get a hold of them and collect this worm after it congregates here on
one of these branches this is a Colorado blue spruce tree and the interesting
thing is we've often gotten swarms off of this tree in the past so they do tend
to reuse the same branch of the same locations to collect before they spread
out to the new location and here they are so that must mean the Queen has
landed on this branch and so the workers are now creating a swarm around her to
protect the Queen most Scouts go out
and even though I'm a little frustrated of course that I'm leaving half the
strength of the colony and the observation hive and I'm working with it
is also an opportunity to share how swarms happen and then you know what the
process is so we'll just go ahead and video this activity and show you what
the beads do now keep in mind back inside the observation hive about 50% of
the beads are still there and there there are braids so the colony is not
doomed and just showing you that I'm not wearing any protective clothing here
just following the beads around until I can get them in a position to come back
and collect them
now it's warm still this is really not a very big one even once all the workers
collect on this branch we're talking maybe two to three pounds of beads and
you notice that even some of the workers that are going to swarm they have
resources with them they have pollen and most of them have filled up on honey
resources before they go out because they need to survive for the next 24 to
72 hours while they think they're going to find a new location but I'm going to
locate them in a new light body myself
and of course while I'm making this video some of the worker beads are
landing on me and landing on the camera and they may land in your hair if you're
this close to a swarm but remember that this is not a high this is not a colony
since one node they're looking for a new place to live and therefore they're not
defensive so unless you're allergic to bees or there's some other reason why
you're concerned about being stung there really is very little chance we're
going to be stung and you're following up on a swarm so the bees are in
survival mode they really don't want to give up their lives to defend something
that they're only going to occupy for a small amount of time
and when there is a swarm the Queen that has left the colony is always the older
Queen and she is driven out by the workers it's anyone's guess this Queen
was laying well she was laying eggs in every available tell she was productive
it's anyone's guess as to why the workers suddenly turn on a queen and
decide to change her around and stop feeding her and dinner to lose weight so
that she can fly out and start a new felony elsewhere and a lot of people
spend a lot of time trying to figure out why they'd be sworn sometimes there's no
real rhyme or reason I mean you could stop us warm by taking out the Queen and
then of course the workers would remain in the colony or the if you took the
Queen out of the swarm they would return to the colony they left and these are
the residual bees and you can see the activity inside now is calming down
quite a bit most of these are going to remain in
this observation hive
and again this is the entry point to the hive at the bottom there now this is the
queen cell that I was actually observing I was planning to have her and hatch out
and get macro video of it and did not anticipate that they would swarm so soon
within 48 hours of this swarm that Queen cell did hatch out and we do now have a
virgin queen in this colony and this is the video gear that I was using to do
the macro sequences of the Queen hatching behavior which of course was
interrupted now by the swarm activity now notice the outside landing board if
they had not been there and had not noticed the behavior walking around a
regular honeybee colony you would look at a landing board and this looks normal
you'd have no idea that they had swarmed out to an adjacent tree like this
so now I'm just going to go and get a ladder and a bucket and collect this
worm and get them in a hive so that we can try to get them to survive their
chances are low it's mid-august and here's the ladder I've already taken the
swarm away and put them in a body but they're going to need resources I'm
going to have to feed them and we're going to have to really kind of coddle
them through the winter here because there won't be time for them to build up
reach the box I put him in so this is a standard 10 frame honeybee hive and
here's the bucket next to it that I used to collect them you can see that they
are going in and now they're fanning and they're controlling it you can take a
frame of grief from one of your other hives if you have it you can put that in
the deep box here and they're less likely to abandon a frame of capped
brood so that's just one method you can use I don't have to with these guys I
think all of these bees are going to stay and they did so I hope you enjoyed
that little frustrating for me to lose the bees in the middle of a project
an opportunity to inform you about honeybees and swarming thanks for
watching