Senga's Blog
Eco-chic Outdoor Living & Exterior Design
11-01-14 Senga's Vlog - How do you retreive your bee swarm?
This June, one of our beehives from our edible green roof swarmed to the woods about 100' away from our roof. Bees swarm because they have run out of room in their hive. Because the queen can no longer lay eggs in the frames because they are filled, the worker bees will work on creating a new queen. Hours before the new queen in the hive is about to hatch, the old queen will take half her worker bees and go in search of a new nesting site. The half that remains in the hive will continue on with the newly hatched queen.
Usually a swarm will cluster in an area for only hours before scout bees locates and leads the swarm to a new home. In our case our swarm stayed in the nearby tree for 2 days - probably due to bad weather conditions. So taking this opportunity we called a 'Bee wrangler' to come and help us retrieve our hive. We went from two hives to three!
