Perhaps you’ve seen an cloud of bees moving through the neighborhood recently. It’s that time of year when honeybees “swarm”: a hive splits in two and half leave to find a new home. While it can be an intimidating site, tens of thousands of bees darkening the sky, the bees are at their most docile at this point, and there are many beekeepers that would be more than happy to come collect them if you can find them.
Kevin, a beekeeper in lower Wallingford, writes:
It’s springtime and once again the natural world gets out of winter mode and life renews itself. Spring and summer are also the times when swarms of honeybees start looking for new homes. A honeybee hive is considered a superorganism. While individual bees are born inside hives, the whole hive reproduces by splitting into two (or sometimes more) much like an amoeba.
Here’s what happens. A colony in the wild grows in numbers within the hive, but the hive cannot expand. To relieve the overcrowding, the worker bees decide to split the colony. They raise a new queen among their young, and half the bees and a queen leave the hive in search of a new home. This is what a swarm is. The remaining bees raise a new queen and go one with life in the old hive. The swarm is left to gather somewhere in a ball of bees while scout bees search for a new home. Once a home is found, the bees, up to 15,000 of them, move in all at once. It’s an amazing event to see.
Most beekeepers are capable of expanding space in beehives and thus are reasonably successful in keeping bees from swarming. Many will actually create artificial swarms by splitting their hives in two thus increasing their number of hives while keeping the bees from swarming on their own.
Swarms are not inherently dangerous. They’re just waiting somewhere before moving into a new home. The main danger comes when you try to bother them or if individual bees panic. (There’s been many a time when an individual bee got tangled in my hair and panicked.)
The 911 center has a list of beekeepers that will capture swarms of bees for free providing they are fairly easily accessible. The beekeepers will first ask questions to make sure they are indeed honeybees rather that wasps or other types of bees. In Wallingford (or north Seattle), you can call me directly (206-633-3577 or 206-861-4638).
Any advice on who to call to remove a small swarm of yelow jacket\hornets from my Wallingford house?
Thank you very much for this information. With all the new beekeepers in the neighborhoods this type of event could be alarming to those of us who have never seen it before. Thanks again
Is that what happened at JSIS this week? Tuesday afternoon I saw police tape and a sign about “Bee Danger” in the NW corner of the school grounds.
A beekeeper friend of mine used to be “on call” in West Seattle for swarms. If the police got a report of a swarm (your “ball of bees” is a good description), they’d call my friend, and he’d head over there with his gear and induce them into one of his empty hives, which he’d then take home.
I recommend Jerry the Bee Guy. He’s actually Marvin.
Last year, we started seeing bees in our basement. They were coming through holes in our furnace chimney which is crumbling. Our neighbor keeps bees so I’m guessing it could have been her hive splitting off. Luckily the bees in our basement were just scouts and the swarm didn’t enter. A house on the next street over was not so lucky. As Marvin was leaving our house, he was flagged down by the unlucky person who saw the swarm enter their fireplace chimney. I’m not sure how much it cost them to get rid of it, but the bees were there for several days even after they tried to smoke them out.
Repairing the holes in an unused furnace chimney is really expensive. We plugged up the holes with steel wool but time will tell if that will be enough. While I’m not against beekeeping, I am a little worried that having these bees as neighbors is going to cost me.
Perhaps someone/s handy in the Bee Club can volunteer to repair the holes in the unused furnace chimney above? I’m for solutions whenever possible. Is there a repair alternative to plugging holes?
Good point Nancy. I got 2 chimney masons to give me quotes, but they are probably proposing a much more impeccable solution than is needed in this case. I have to admit, I’m afraid of getting on the roof to try any repairs on my own.