The scout bees need to agree on where to go next. It can take up to 3 days.
The process is:
- A couple of hundred scout bees roam round the area checking out
possible homes.
- If they find one they return to the cluster, and do a waggle dance
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waggle_dance>on he surface of the cluster
indicating "300 yards North East" or whatever. Meanwhile other scouts are
doing other dances indicating other cavities.
- The scouts check out each others' finds. At some point a consensus
emerges - they are all doing the same dance. At this point the swarm goes
to the new home.
- Once it's gone, a few scout bees return and find everyone gone. They
cluster where they last saw their family and eventually die. If I find a
tiny hand-sized cluster of honeybees, I brush them into a small box and
that evening I brush them onto the landing board of a queen-right hive.
They walk right in.
If you have a bait hive it may well be checked out by scouts. If you see 20
bees going in and out a swarm is seriously interested in it.
Towards the end of the swarm season (now) most of the best cavities have
been taken, so I assume swarms hang around longer as they look for one.
Paul
On Thu, 8 Jul 2021 at 13:34, Beka Vaughan <rebekah_vaughan@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
I was just thinking the same! Perhaps they feel safe enough to stay even
though a suitable new home hasn't been found yet?
Thursday, 08 July 2021, 01:32pm +01:00 from Barbara Elizabeth Robinson
liz20swan@xxxxxxxxx:
So here is a question posed by my other half.
Why does a swarm collect on something - sometimes staying overnight -
instead of going straight off to a new home?
