Thank you for this thought provoking (not just about bees) mail Jon.
I can add some detail, or perhaps confusion, to the swarm queens issue. It may
be more characteristic of our local bees than yours, though.
As I understand it, most prime swarms supersede the original, mated queen
within a few weeks. Whilst I've heard of worn-out infertile queens being booted
out brutally, I suspect the queen you saw was still fertile. Young / virgin
queens smell only faintly of queen pheromone, so even after the old queen left
the hive - which may have been voluntary, remember bees instinctively leave a
hive if they are unwell - her pheromones may have been stronger than the new
queen. Thus a small court might well attend her.
I've collected perhaps 40 swarms in all, and I've seen multi-queen behaviour at
least 6 times. It arises because after the original queen has left with the
prime swarm, the colony is left with multiple virgin queens. Some books say
they fight to the death / sting rivals in cells but the truth is more complex.
Sometimes they fight, sometimes not. Some queens leave with a secondary swarm
(cast) rather than risk a fight. This can result in several casts leaving,
often on successive days, each one smaller and probably less viable than the
last. From the photos you have sent of swarms in your area, I don't think it is
common for your strain of bee because those are HUGE swarms, whereas I have
caught some as small as a couple of fistfuls. A couple of which survived and
thrived with help (feeding), though I am averse to feeding now as such
excessive swarming seems a counter-survival trait, so best it is not propagated.
Although the first queen hatched would like to kill all her rivals, sometimes
the workers won't let her until they have a mated queen. The others are
backups! They physically herd her away from the other unhatched queen cells. If
she returns from a successful mating flight she can do the tooting and quacking
thing to locate rivals and sting them in their cells. If she doesn't return,
the colony switches to plan (queen) B. Isn't that clever? But it can't be the
way they do it in every colony, or I wouldn't see 4 swarms from one hive, I'd
only ever see one prime swarm a year.
A typical multi-queen swarm behaves like 2 (sometimes more) clumps of bees and
sometimes one will not go in a box. This indicates the presence of a virgin
queen and the bees can't smell her well, even if she is in the box. If you put
both queens in the same box, the workers won't fight but the queens won't like
it - one will leave, taking maybe half the bees with her. It makes for a very
long and chaotic swarm collection. Even if you get both queens in separate
boxes, they smell so faintly that workers continue to return to the branch they
started on looking for her. However if you leave one box in place and return in
the evening you will usually find them all in there, to keep warm.
If there are many days of bad weather just after the original queen has laid
her queen cells, so there's no opportunity for the prime swarm to leave, she
may still be in the hive when they hatch. I don't know if fighting breaks out
then, but on the first day of good weather the queens compete to attract
swarms. The original, fertile queen mum attracts a lot of workers and virgins
may instinctively fly with them! So if you ever catch a swarm and see a queen
among them being ignored by the workers,say on the outside of a cluster, that's
not THE queen.
Gareth once saw a large swarm in his apiary which would not land on anything,
it just stayed as a cloud of bees. Then he saw TWO queens land on top of an
empty (bait) hive. Rather than fighting, they seemed to stare at each other,
then one froze and the other climbed on and stung her. Gareth reckoned they
were calculating which was fitter and could lead the colony best. It was quite
unlike the violent struggle the books write of and interesting that the workers
took no part in it. Once the queens had decided, the workers landed and
everyone proceeded into the hive in an orderly fashion.
Paul
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
On Thursday, 28 November 2019 09:24, Jon Darvill <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Hello OxNat Beeks
Those of you who keep an eye on international events may have noticed the use
of the words fire and catastrophic in reference to Australia from whence I
write. It’s not that this type of fire is unheard of, or unusual here but
that the fire season has come so early in spring. The first fires were in
Queensland and New South Wales. In Queensland it was rainforest (think humid,
moist, wet) that was burning, testament to the drought conditions they’ve
been experiencing for some time now. That fire burnt for 10 days. The long
term forecast for us this summer is for hotter and dryer than usual across
most of the country with the increased risk of severe fires
In Canberra where I live, work and benignly neglect my bees, we have avoided
such catastrophes thus far but we are in drought conditions. Some would
describe conditions here as a green drought as we emerge from winter and into
spring. A green drought means that overall rainfall is in short supply but
that on odd occasions we will get 10-20 mm. Plant life puts on a spurt. The
surrounding grass land shows tinges of green and we all go ahhhh. But the
season wears on and the green drought becomes brown as we hit temperatures in
the high 30s and into the 40s (centigrade). Thunderstorms come and go
providing their light and sound shows but little or no rain. We call them dry
storms. The skies are often overcast with brown clouds rather than grey. Dust
from parched crop lands further west where any semblance of ground cover has
been lost and with it their precious topsoil heading across the Tasman sea en
route to New Zealand.
Of course we also have beautiful days. Blue skies, gentle breezes,
temperatures in the 20s. What more could a man and a bee ask for?
My eye on the world noted recently the words widespread heavy rain and
flooding with reference to the UK, particularly around Sheffield if memory
serves me well. All of which goes to show that wherever we are, as friends of
bees we are facing what seems to be increasingly difficult conditions.
For those who may have joined this list since my last post, I have personal
and familial roots in Oxfordshire. I met Paul at the first LFTB conference in
the Netherlands and have lurked on this list ever since contributing longer
posts of our local natural beekeeping adventures, over your winter season.
I did have the pleasure of visiting your green and pleasant land in August
just gone and met Paul, Helen and Gareth, who gave up their time to show me
through their bee lands, for which I’m very grateful. It took me sometime to
normalise to the lushness of Ireland and the UK and I was conversely shocked
at how dry my part of Australia was on my return.
The swarming season has been erratic. Starting late here as the chills of
winter (we can get frosts of -5C) hung on. I have only caught 6. None of my
own hives have swarmed and none of my 4 bait hives have caught anything.
There does seem to be an increase in swarming activity in the last two weeks
coinciding with consistently warmer weather but we are late into spring. To
give you some idea, my hawthorn tree finished flowering (and feeding the
bees) about a week and a half ago.
My most interesting swarm was early on in spring. I was called to a house in
the north of Canberra late one afternoon, where a swarm was reported. It had
been a beautiful warm spring morning but by mid afternoon the temperature
plummeted with a wind change bringing the icy blasts from the south. By late
afternoon we were in single digit territory counting the wind chill.
The swarm in fact seemed to be two swarms. A smallish cluster on a tree
branch and a larger one on the other side of the house hanging onto the
guttering out of sight of the tree cluster. I collected them in separate
cardboard boxes (thanks Paul for showing me your collecting box which I’ve
emulated). Both seemed confused or uncertain.
The tree cluster behaved as though there was no queen in their box. I have a
small entrance in my boxes. Having caught as many of the bees as I can I
place the box as near to the collection spot as possible and wait for the
stragglers to get the queen pheromones and come home. The entrance is then
closed and off we go. However in this case more bees were crawling out than
going in.
Meanwhile in the other box there was fanning at the entrance but quite a
crowd of bees just not moving despite my having made a little entrance ramp.
I decided that perhaps the two clusters were from the same swarm and moved
the tree girls and placed them near the second box. They immediately left
their box and migrated towards the others but didn’t necessarily go inside.
It was close to dusk by this time. I thought that their behaviour was
probably related to the cold and that the sudden drop in temperature somehow
caught them unawares and they landed in two groups. I covered the cardboard
box and bees outside the box with hessian and left with fingers crossed. The
next morning as the day warmed I was able to collect almost the entire group
and they now live very happily in south Canberra in a beautiful garden.
My other story of the swarming season that may be of interest was of the
death of a queen. I had hived one of the swarms I caught in a brand new Warre
with a brand new beek. I got a call from her late one afternoon two weeks
after the hiving.
Jon, the queen is outside.
Outside? Are you sure?
Yes. She’s in the middle of a small cluster of bees just outside the entrance.
Being only in the 4th year of my lifetime apprenticeship as a beek I was
totally flummoxed. My only thought was that we had to get her back inside.
Night was falling. It was getting cold.
I’m coming over.
Sure enough in the middle of a little cluster there was the queen. They just
seemed to be milling around with no specific purpose obvious to me, so I
gently scooped up the cluster on a conveniently large dried leaf and
deposited them on the landing board of the hive. A bit of shuffling around
and in they went.
Job done.
About half an hour later a text arrived.
The queen’s outside again with her escort. I’ve put her back.
Next morning. The queen was out again, this time with less of an escort.
Later that day she was dead and the escort gone.
Throughout these comings and goings foragers continued with their work as
though nothing was amiss. I was puzzled but slowly came to think that we had
witnessed the leaving of the hive of a dowager queen and that her successor
was in good health inside. That was the only explanation I could come up
with. A couple of weeks after the swarming, the colony replaced the queen and
the dowager left. It didn’t seem as though her escort were harassing her to
leave. Their behaviour was more gentile. I thought we were rather privileged
to actually witness this part of the succession. I suspect many don’t.
Here’s hoping you have an uneventful winter weather wise. Wishing you all a
merry Christmas and happy near year.
Kind regards
Jon
