Presumed Usurpation Attempt Thwarted On July 2d, 2011, I went out for exercise--brisk walking--as I do on alternate mornings. As usual, on my warm-up lap, I looked over at my bee hives, which have been located continuously for 13 years about 50 ft off our private driveway. I also pull off the driveway for a moment each time I come home and enjoy watching them and making inferences about the activities and conditions of these fascinating creatures. Thus, I literally have made thousands of observations of these hives. I have watched them rob, swarm, built up, forage, hang-out, get knocked down by mosquito spray, you name it. That morning, however, the situation was unique in my experience. Bees were hanging onto the back of the hive stand, many were clustered on the ground under the stand, and there was even a small collection in the nearby mayhaw tree, altogether 1-2 lbs. There was also a war going on, with a great deal of bee activity in front of this one hive, but not the other two. I consider my exercise more important than anything else I do, so I continued, but obviously, I was anxious to try to understand what was transpiring. |
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Thirty min later, after I finished my brisk walking, I went back to the hive, this time with my camera. The activity had died down a great deal, but the image (left) does indicate the collection of bees on the ground. My guess is, were I able to go back 30 min before my first notice, all these bees would have been in a tight cluster on the back of the hive. |
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I suspected this was a small swarm. Thus, I tried to and thought I had captured a queen, but a flight-condition queen in a moving cluster is hard to identify unambiguously (more later). Swarm season is over, but even if not, all this is very odd, but surprises are part and parcel of keeping bees.
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As mentioned, the battle was winding down when I was free to devote my time to it. The image (left, under the landing) shows that the field was strewn with victims. Indeed, several feet around the front of the hive was littered with 100s of freshly killed bees. |
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I froze the jar of bees that I collected and determined it was indeed a swarm. In the image (left), I have separated the queen. |
All 3 of my Tallahassee hives had been inspected just 2 weeks earlier as part of my annual state inspection and all were normal. There was a good brood pattern, dwindling numbers of drone cells, no swarm cells. Just perfect. Still, a lot can change, so I examined the embattled hive. On the first frame I pulled, there were eggs, indicating a recent laying queen, not one preparing to swarm. There were no queen cells. I should have stopped. I pulled the next frame, and there was my gorgeous plump queen, certainly one of the best I've ever had. What a gal! I decided to take a photo of her, but shouldn't have--there was a lot going on: my bee suit was at the farm and I was wearing an Inspector Jacket, so I had to be mindful about bees crawling up my legs (see first photo); in my haste, I had not fired up my smoker well and it was only limping along; having not cooled down, I was exhausted from my walk . . . . Long story short, I laid the frame with the queen across the deep and a stack of supers to the left. She ran down into a super while I walked to the truck for my camera. Of course, she's still with me, but I added one thing to my "Never Do Again" list. Actually, I keep an empty deep by the hives just for temporarily storing frames I've pulled to inspect, but protocol did not prevail. The simplest interpretation is that this small swarm was attempting to usurp this nest. This behavior is not generally expected of European honeybeee although there are observations consistent with this behavior. Spouse asked again, "is it getting too hard to keep bees?" Good question. |
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