It's been a while and we have been busy this spring with splitting our colonies that made it through winter! Three out of five colonies survived winter, which is pretty good considering that one of the colonies that died we already knew wouldn't make it back in the fall.
Currently, we have 9 colonies primarily because our "E" hive has swarmed 5 times in the past 3 weeks, which is wild and something we weren't anticipating! It would be 10, but we were not able to catch the primary swarm.
A Little Background
The mother colony of these (many, many) after swarms was a swarm we caught at the end of June 2022, which was right at the end of swarm season. They were not a huge swarm, but they were comb building and resource gathering machines. They were able to accomplish a lot, despite their shortened season, and they went into winter with great numbers and lots of resources.
By the time we were able to open the hive in spring, it was April 14, 2023 and they had massive numbers compared to the other hives. They had overwintered on 9 Layens frames, but there were so many bees that they were spilling into the empty cavity on the other side of the divider board simply because there was simply no space on the frames.
The Primary Swarm
In hindsight, we should have done a 3 way split on this hive that day. But we were looking at the upcoming cold weather and hindsight is 20/20, right?
Two days later, they cast their primary swarm. And it was MASSIVE. This was the day before it was set to get cold and rainy again for a period of time. We got a text from the neighbor saying that our bees had swarmed, but by the time we got there, it was too late and they were gone.
Which is a real bummer, right? Their numbers were definitely down in the hive and we could finally see that they had many, many capped queen cells since the frames weren't literally covered in bees.
Mistake number 2 was not splitting this hive again after their primary swarm. Of course, we looked at the weather (cold, rainy) and thinking there was no way they'd swarm again so soon, we left them to it.
The Secondary Swarm
The next nice day, which was 11 days later, we decided to go back and check on the hive again. When we arrived, they were actively swarming. A decent sized swarm, but not as big as the first.
And ok... a secondary swarm is not entirely unexpected, especially from such a large colony. We caught the swarm. No harm, no foul.
We opened the mother colony and, they still had a lot of bees and several unopened queen cells. Maybe they were just waiting on their preferred queen and then they'll settle down... right?!
The Baby Swarms
Not so fast! Three days later, we get another text saying there are 2 small balls of bees in the tree. When we arrive, each of these tiny balls of bees have a virgin queen. We get them into a couple of swarm traps and move on... again.
At this point, I'm suspicious of this colony and their tendency to swarm, so when we made plans to return to the hive on the next nice day, I made sure we had everything we'd need for any scenario they could throw at us.
Because, if you're keeping track, they've swarmed 4 times at this point. Their numbers are way down and they still don't have a laying queen 2 weeks since the original queen left.
The Two Pounder
We went back 5 days later to check on the hive and upon arrival, everything seemed quiet. The hive was active and foraging, and we thought all was well for once. We spoke to the land owner for a few minutes about how crazy these bees have been, when we spot it....
If you hadn't guessed already, it was another swarm. We have no idea how long they'd been there, but thankfully, out of an abundance of caution (and distrust), we were prepared. The swarm was hived, etc... you know the drill by now.
We open the mother colony and they are... really low in numbers now. No queen was spotted, but there were at least 2 unopened queen cells. We decided to leave it and just keep checking.
Our biggest concern at this point is the viability of the mother colony. They're at nearly 3 weeks without a laying queen at the time of this post and they have very little, if any brood or resources left. Fortunately, they have a lot of nice weather coming, but it remains unknown if they will ultimately survive.
From one perspective, casting several swarms, even at the expense of the mother colony can make sense. Odds of continuing their line of genetics are better the more "offspring" they have. If the colony does "swarm itself to death" then we have at least 2-4 more colonies than we started with that are from the same family of bees.
From another perspective, maintaining the viability of a strong mother colony to continue producing offspring each spring makes more sense to me, but I'm not a honeybee.
One thing is for sure, we have learned a lot this spring about the personalities and characteristics of each of our surviving original colonies. Which is a great way to determine what we, as beekeepers, prefer in our bees.
The "Es" are amazing, but if they're going to run us ragged every year and swarm their mother colonies to death in the process, then maybe they aren't the bees we want in our yard long term.