Bee Swarming

We have had 4 swarms of bees this year so far. They are out of two different hives. We belive that the reason they are swarming is they are honey bound. They have so much honey that the queen doesnt have any where to lay her eggs. They swarm every 21 days. That is how long it takes a queen to hatch. Then after the queen hatches she kills all other queen cells. Then the older queen takes half of the workers with her (atleast) and leaves the hive. They normally land some where near where they swarm from. Our problem is that they have landed in really high places where you can not reach them. They send out scout bees to find them a new place. The rest of the bees cluster around the queen to protect her. They are normally laid back at this time. You can see people shake them bare handed off the branch in which they landed. They will go into a dark place so we place a hive in front of them and shake them in the top. The ones that dont go into the hive by shaking will go in the front. Hubby has made a bee vaccum that sucks them up for when they do not land on a branch. (I will post instructions on making them and pictures soon)

It is illegal in most areas to kill bees. If you have a swarm call your extension agent, city hall or local law enforcement. They should have a list of bee keepers that will remove them for you. This is also a good way to get them out of a wall. (Hubby has had to go into people shouses and remove them for them too)

To fix a honey bound situation you need to remove some of the frames and place new clean ones or ones with drawn out comb on them in thier place. It is important that the queen have plenty of room to lay her eggs in the spring. We have had a bee explosion in the past 4 weeks due to the spring bloom.