How to stop honeybees from swarming

An early morning shot of the hives on our home yard.

What's new on the farm:

The bees have been home for almost a week now. There are so many bees in our home yard that you can hear them buzzing from several hundred feet away from the hives.

Andrew has been waking up early mornings to get the hives moved out to the outyards.

Once the sun comes out and the temperature rises, the foraging bees head out to start their workday.

That's why the best time to move bees is late at night or early in the morning. This is when all the bees are back home inside the hive. We don't want to leave any behind!

Even though you may see many hives out in the yard, each bee always returns to the same hive every single day.

When they leave the hive for the first time in their lives, they look around at their surroundings. They note any landmarks and orient their position against the sun.

If you move a hive only a few feet away, the bees will go back to the original position where the hive used to be.

You'll see them hovering over the empty spot for a long time before they eventually have to fly off to find another hive nearby to join.

To permanently move a hive, you have to take it at least a few kilometers away from its original location. That way, the bees will have to reset their mental map and get their bearings again.

Getting ready to split the hives

Andrew has been very happy with how the hives are growing. The California queens that he introduced a few weeks ago are laying eggs like crazy.

The hives are getting big enough that they will soon need to be split up, otherwise they will get too crowded and swarm.

Swarming is the natural reproductive process that honeybees go through in the wild. When a colony gets overcrowded, it is time to swarm.

The honeybees will produce a new queen, and then the old queen and half of the bees will split off. They will find a new home to establish themselves.

We don't want half of our bees flying off into the wild. Otherwise, they can end up in people's homes, old barns, or structures.

It's also difficult for wild hives to survive on their own here in Saskatchewan.

We stay on top of this natural urge by splitting the hive before they swarm.

We take up to half of the bees and move them into another set of hive equipment and give them a new queen.

We are waiting for another batch of queens from California again, but this time from a different supplier.

We are also importing Buckfast queens from Italy, which is a special breed that has been developed and maintained since 1919.

I'll write more about those queens once they arrive, but we are anticipating a healthy mix of genetics!

Occupational hazard of being a beekeeper

They say bee stings are good for arthritis...our joints are going to be nice and smooth forever!