Beekeeping Surprises: A Wild Swarm Appears

It is common advice in beekeeping to have two hives, as the stronger of the two can help to support the weaker. We started out with a single hive, entering into the hobby as simply as possible. We had considered expanding the number of hives in the future, depending on how we went with the first. Apparently, the bees had different plans.

While we were doing some work on one of the fences, Anita noticed a odd bulge on one of the gum trees in the goat paddock. This was our first experience with a swarm a bees, so we quickly started researching what might've gone wrong and what we needed to do to deal with it. The most difficult part was the feeling of disappointment in my failing of duties as a beekeeper.

A hive can swarm for a few reasons, but the most likely was that they didn't have enough space. I had been regularly checking them every couple of weeks or so, and had even sighted the queen just six days prior, so at first I couldn't understand how this had happened. I immediately inspected the hive again, and noticed a few troubling things; the food sources were low, the queen was nowhere to be seen, and we noticed a couple of what looked like queen cells. As they gorge themselves prior to swarming, and the queen was gone, it was clear to us that our queen had swarmed.

We thought perhaps, the location of the hive was too exposed to heat of the summer sun, or maybe they were struggling to find enough nectar or pollen. I mentioned all of these theories when I phoned Steve, the guy from whom we acquired the colony. He dismissed these as extremely unlikely and that more likely, as he put it, "a bad queen". Sometimes you get unlucky and a new queen just doesn't do what she's supposed to. As surprised as we were, and curious, he offered to come round to inspect the hive to assess its condition and if there was anything else we needed to do to keep them happy and healthy.

In the meantime, Anita and I moved the swarm to a small bee box, the nucleus we used when we transported our bees initially. We placed it next to the other hive, and then added a bag of sugar water to supplement their food sources. By the time Steve arrived, the frames in the new hive had started to be built on by the bees, and we had the start of two separate healthy looking colonies.

Upon closer inspection, Steve pointed out our queen on one of the frames. He took a step back from the hives, and realised something we should really have noticed much earlier. The bees in the second hive were much darker than our hive. We'd caught a feral swarm, and our bees were doing just fine. They were struggling a little bit to find enough food, so they might need us to continue to help them out with that before the winter, but they were fine.

The next day, the feral hive box was empty. Apparently they didn't like their new digs, or perhaps just being disturbed so often, and just like that, we were back down to one hive. We topped up their bag of sugar water, and a week or so later, they were looking strong enough, so I added another box to their hive.

It was quite the emotional roller coaster, feeling like I'd failed as a beekeeper, the rush to research what might've gone wrong and what to do about it, and then finally realising we hadn't done anything wrong at all. It was probably a good opportunity to force us to learn more about dealing with feral swarms, preventing our own from swarming, as well as how help them to improve their food stores before the winter. A learning that I'm sure is going to prove valuable in our future beekeeping endeavours.