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Honey bee swarms and Safe removal of bees
If you have a bee swarm that needs removing, please take a look at our
list of bee swarm collectors
Do you have a bee swarm?
To understand Honey bees swarms and thier need to relocate we
need to understand their behaviour and what is happening within a colony.
Unlike wasps
and hornets, bees swarm at a certain time of year, this is in the
spring/early summer and the reason why they do this is due to the colony
becoming too large for the space that it is occupying. If the hive or
nest starts to become overcrowded as the numbers of individuals start
to grow, then the hive produces new queen cells and this is the first
sign that a colony is about to swarm. Most beekeepers are aware of this
and try to stop it from happening, but occasionally for one reason or
another, a colony will swarm. The original queen will leave the nest or
hive and take about half of the worker bees with her. They are looking
to set up a new home and start a new colony.
Very often these swarms will land on a tree
and can be seen hanging from a branch, they may land on your house or
roof, in fact anywhere. This is just temporary, they have sent worker
bees out to look for a suitable place to start a new nest, and once this
new place has been found the swarm will relocate to it. When a swarm behaves
in this manner, the original nest or hive is usually very close by. So
if you find yourself with a bee swarm on your property, our advice would
be to try and contact your local beekeeper, this swarm is almost guaranteed
to be from one of his hives.
Normally a swarm will not stay longer than a day or two, then it will
move on to it’s new home.
The first piece of good news is: when Bees swarm in this fashion, they
are very unlikely to sting or attack, in fact when they swarm like this
they are in a really good mood and they have no nest or hive to defend.
The second piece of good news is: Bees can be relocated!
Most beekeepers are more than happy to come along and take a swarm away.
In the majority of cases the process is fairly quick and involves locating
the queen within the swarm. If the swarm is hanging from a branch or bush,
then the process involves gently shaking the swarm into a basket, then
placing the basket on the ground. Any bees that are not contained within
the swarm will very quickly navigate towards the pheromone that the queen
emits and within half an hour or so the process is complete, the bees
can then be secured for transport and their safe removal can be
completed.
In the majority of cases where the queen can be accessed then the swarm
can be taken away. The problems start when the bees have taken up residence
in an awkward to reach location.
If you are unfortunate enough to have a swarm take up residence within
a cavity wall or some other difficult location whereby the queen cannot
be retrieved then unfortunately the only course of action is to destroy
the colony. This is done in a similar way as we would Destroy
a wasp nest. However, there some other factors to be taken into consideration
when treating bees, for example: if a bee colony has taken up residence
within a cavity wall, it is reccomended that the honey comb is removed
and any entrances to the effected area must (by law) be blocked. This
is to prevent contamination of any other bee colonies that are local to
the area.
You can read further information
about bee treatments.
So a bee treatment may not be so straight foward as it may appear, every
situation is different, talk to your local pest controller and seek his
advice. We prefer to try every option available to relocate where possible.
There has been some success retrieving colonies from cavity walls using
a one way valve (the bees can come out, but they cannot get back in) but
this is a new method and still being tested. If this proves to be effective
then we will adopt this method over the coming seasons.
Bees are in decline due to a variety of reasons and whenever they can
be saved then we should make every effort to do so.
Bumble Bees can also be moved if they are proving to be a problem, but generally they are non aggressive unless their nest is threatened and we advise that you just leave them alone, they will return the favour.
We often get calls from people who have Mining Bees, this happens only
at a specific time of the year, when the Bees are burrowing into the ground
to lay their eggs.
Please note that Mining Bees DO NOT have a sting and are completely harmless.
Once they have laid their eggs they will disappear until next year. No
treatment is necessary.
We are currently building a list of bee swarm collectors within the UK
If you are a bee swarm collector and would like to be added to the list, please contact us using the link at the foot of the page.