QUEEN BEES: WHAT IS SWARMING

Survival key of the entire hive, the queen bee plays a primary and essential role for the whole swarm. We can define the set of all bees as a super organism. Explaining this concept better we can say that bees, taken individually, are not able to survive. Their life depends solely on the concatenation of their roles and the cooperation of their actions.
The queen bee is the centerpiece of the reproduction of a swarm, its entire life is dedicated solely to this purpose and when it is no longer able to fulfill this role, it leaves the hive.
This particular process is called swarming.

Why does this phenomenon happen

As you well know, queen bees are capable of producing a very high number of eggs every day. After fertilization, the queen bees remain permanently inside the hive and through their sting, they are able to give life by laying plenty of eggs for about five months a year.
During this process the queen is fully protected by her workers who try in every way to keep her always in an optimal state. The worker bees provide the queen's temperature, food and protection as at that moment she represents their source of survival.
When the queen bee begins to age, this attention is less and less. When the queen is no longer able to sustain optimal rhythms for the production of eggs, she begins to become less indispensable for the other bees who immediately work to create a new one.
The new queen will be able to fill the role of the previous one very well, since she is young, fresh and strong. The replacement of the queen usually takes place over a period of about three years.
The swarming therefore takes place precisely to replace the old queen with a new one capable of being more efficient in reproduction.

Jealousy among the queen bees

Obviously for the current queen, her replacement is frowned upon as she would like to maintain her role of supremacy and importance in the swarm as much as possible.
Leaving the hive would involve significant risks for her survival as she is used to so many vices and protections on the part of her workers. Precisely for this reason the queen tries as much as possible to delay her replacement. As? Trying to postpone the construction of new royal cells in which larvae destined to become queen bees will grow.
To block the workers in the construction of the cells. The queen communicates by emitting particular olfactory substances called pheromones.
Pheromones attract the attention of other bees who return to focus on their current sovereign. However, this method is not absolute and has a limited maturity. With aging and with the increase in the swarm, the pheromones produced are no longer enough to keep the other bees at bay, which will resume the construction of royal cells undeterred to create new queens.

Formation of a new colony

The time has come for the queen to leave the hive. During the preparation for this phase, the nurse bees provide less and less food to the queen which in this way wastes, her abdomen shrinks and the sovereign definitively stops producing eggs.
As a good exit after the excellent task carried out in the hive, the old queen, now useless for the survival of the swarm, will be entitled to a small supply of honey for her departure.
About two weeks after the royal egg is laid, the queen bee must leave and leave her large family.
The end of her work has now come. A small part of the swarm will leave with her towards a temporary shelter in which to spend the rest of her existence.
Meanwhile the old swarm awaits the birth of the new sovereign, the bees are restless and with the new queen bee the survival cycle is repeated, thus creating a new large family.

Swarming in beekeeping

Although swarming is a process that fascinates farmers, it is still important to keep the phenomenon under control in beekeeping.
Witnessing the swarming is a wonderful thing. The bees are restless and begin to come out en masse to leave with the queen.
Through this process, however, the beekeeper faces a significant loss since in that period he will find a reduced, smaller and weaker swarm.
Totally blocking swarming is almost impossible, but the process can be kept under control through artificial swarming.

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We will provide you with all the useful information for the success of your breeding. If you want to know more about the inclusion of the queen bee in your swarm, read our informative article: Queen bee introduction always valid advice