Yesterday I was looking through the bee hives to assess their needs. It always amazes me how the hive works together continuously for the good of the whole.
While the queen does not direct or make decisions for the hive in any way, she brings stability, calm, and order to the hive.
The first hive I opened it was evident immediately that they were queenless.
Flighty, restless, a different sound to the whole hive, no eggs, no larva, no new growth.
The next hive had decided that they were over crowded and needed to swarm, possibly to take stress off of the resources, reduce overcrowding and so on.
The third hive was totally packed with bees, honey and brood wall to wall top to bottom!!
Yet, they had not swarmed, which is amazing to me!
We were able to make a new hive from that super full one which is always a fun thing to do. We also had some queen cells in the hive that swarmed that we moved over to the queenless hive for them to raise a new queen.
Even in nature some receive and others don't, some grow while others struggle, some are healthy, others not so much.
It is amazing and perplexing.
The other day we had a swarm. The bees landed in a tree too high for us to reach even with the tractor bucket so we were forced to just watch and wait.
Eventually, the swarm took off, we chased after it far into the woods.
We were hoping they would land again so we could gather them into a new colony.
They kept going too far and too fast.
The strange thing was they left nearly half of their cluster in the tree!! To my knowledge they are still there, clumped on a branch, no home, no queen, no vision, no purpose.
A head scratcher for sure!!
Usually, when they swarm they all move together, communicating with the scouts about where to go for a new home.
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