Bee swarm? Don’t panic!

Swarms of hundreds of bees are a common spring occurrence. No need to worry - they're harmless.

Story and photos by Keith Fielder

The lady on the phone was amazingly calm. “I’ve had something really strange happen here at our home this afternoon,” she said. “There is a huge bunch of bees crawling on a fence post.” She went on to ask what caused them to do that, and what she should do. Calls like this one are a joy for me to receive compared to the usual panicked individual who wants to throw gasoline on the bees.

This swarm on a fence post in Putnam County prompted a phone call to Extension Agent Keith Fielder.

What the lady was experiencing was a swarm of feral honey bees that had issued from a colony in a big hardwood tree about 30 feet away in their back yard. A perfectly normal thing to happen on a sunny spring afternoon in the Lake Country.

Honey bees swarm as a means of reproduction, not unlike a cell dividing in the human body. We think of honey bees now days as a super organism, with each individual bee carrying out certain tasks in the colony. They clean, make wax, build comb, care for the queen, defend the colony from disturbances and intruders, store pollen and, of course, make honey.  When you observe closely, you see that the colony functions more like a single organism than a collective of individual insects, thus the term “super organism.”

Honey bees live a life influenced largely by pheromone secretions from the queen. In late winter the queen begins to lay eggs, increasing her laying activities as food resources become more available and days get longer. By early spring, the number of bees in the colony is typically dense enough that the queen’s pheromone secretions will not circulate so well in the congestion. In reaction, the worker bees begin to make specialized queen cells low in the colony. They may make dozens of these cells in which day-old larva, selected by the workers, are placed and fed a rich diet of royal jelly. The growing queen larva literally swims in a pool of royal jelly, acting like Pacman as she eats.

A large swarm of honey bees covering a fence post readily moves into a beekeeper’s bee hive box for its new home site.

When the workers in the colony are certain they have prepared a suitable number of

replacement candidates for the duties of queen, they prepare to swarm. They typically do so with the old queen, starving her down so that she is capable of flying again. When all is right on a sunny afternoon, the colony will quite literally divide, and around 60% of the bees leave and find a place to collect near the parent colony. Sometimes they settle high in a tree, sometimes they choose a lower place to settle. It’s the low hanging swarms that seem to get noticed and generate a lot of hysteria.

Once the swarm has settled, scout bees will begin to search for a viable cavity to move into. They fly about searching for the scent of old nest sites and investigating hollow trees, holes in the walls of homes, old barns, even new construction, looking for an ideal home. When such a site is located, the scout bees return to the hanging swarm and communicate their news. If their lobbying is strong enough, away the swarm goes, flying to their new home site where they will resume normal colony functions.

They begin building comb, gathering pollen and nectar, and the queen will begin to lay eggs again, creating a new colony that will continue to perpetuate this means of reproduction.

 Meanwhile back in the old colony, on or about day 16 after the queen cell was created, the new virgin queens begin to emerge. The first one out has little tolerance for her sisters and will typically sting each developing queen cell, killing the competition. If several emerge together, they will fight until there is a victor.

The virgin queen then will begin to take mating flights. She flies to drone congregation areas where male honey bees, known as drones, fly out from different colonies and loiter, waiting for queens to show up.  The young queen will mate with dozens of drones, storing their semen in a special organ known as the spermatheca. If all goes well, she will live to head her own swarm some day and perpetuate the cycle.

Remember:

***  Honey bee swarms are not aggressive and should be left alone, but can be quietly observed from a distance. They typically will disperse within 24-36 hours or less.

***  Honey bee swarms are not aggressive and should be left alone, but can be quietly observed from a distance. They typically will disperse within 24-36 hours or less.

***  If a swarm chooses to land in an inconvenient site or if you are nervous about their presence, give your local UGA Cooperative Extension Agent a call. They maintain a list of local beekeepers who are glad to come collect swarms, usually for free. The number of your Georgia county's agent can be found here: https://extension.uga.edu/county-offices.html

***  If a swarm chooses to move into your home or structure, call your Extension Agent as well. They can provide contact information for licensed honey bee removal specialists.

***  Please do not spray swarms with insecticides or throw gasoline on them. They are important pollinators and we need them in our natural world.

-- Keith Fielder is the UGA Extension Agent for Putnam and Hancock counties and a Georgia Master Beekeeper