How can you save a swarm of Honey Bees?
Each year in spring time, when conditions are good a colony of Honey Bees will naturally reproduce. The daughter colony will leave the hive, with the old queen in a cloud of around 60% of the worker bees.
This swarm of bees is an amazing natural phenomenon, and is effectively the birth of a new colony of bees.
Many people find the swarming cloud of bees scary however they are actually at their most gentle as they do not have a home or nest to defend.
Help me save the bees by hosting one of The Practical Beekeepers’s Honey Bee rescue boxes so the bees have a safe place to setup home. – To find out more check out my short video here
What is a swarm of bees looking for in a new home?
After the daughter colony flies as a swarm they will rest as a cluster of bees in a tree or on the eaves of your house, while they look for a suitable space to setup a new home.
The ideal size the Honey Bees will be looking for is a space of around 2 cubic feet of space, (about the size of an 8 frame Langstroth box). The ideal location of the cavity is around 3 metres above ground. The entrance for this cavity should ideally be facing north and have a small opening (32mm is ideal)
How do the bees decide on the best home site?
The scout bees will be searching the surrounding area for the best home sites. When the scout bees return back and communicate with the swarm they have found the best site, then after a democratic process the most suitable home site is often chosen.
Sometimes when the bees swarm in the suburbs, unfortunately the site they choose to setup home in may be a compost bin, the walls of a house or in a chimney. This leaves the bees vulnerable to destruction by pest controllers.
Saving swarms of Honey Bees
To help give the scout bees a safe choice we have built Honey Bee rescue hives which provide a safe alternative for the bees to setup home.
Together we can set up this empty homes for the bees in gardens, rooftops or parks so the naturally occurring Spring swarms will choose these homes over other spaces. Once the bees have moved in I will come and remove the box and re-house the swarm in a parkland where they can be safe and productive contributors to the local environment. Swarm boxes also stop bees from taking up valuable tree nesting hollows or bird nesting boxes set up for native wildlife.
We need your help to save the bees – can you host one of the boxes? there is no charge and if the bees come and setup home we will remove the box and give the bees a new home
Send me an email benedict@thepracticalbeekeeper.com.au and I will get back to you as soon as I can – or call me in the evenings – details are in the flyer here