We had the first swarm of 2023 (that we are aware of) the other day, right after Spring Equinox!

It is always part of honey bees' nature to swarm.  When honey bees swarm, it means the mother queen bee leaves the hive, taking half of the workers (females) and drones (males) with her, to settle in a new place.  A new queen will be made by the bees staying behind, and they continue to live in their current hive location.  When honey bees swarm, it means the hive has grown to the point that the current hive location is not enough to accommodate the large population, and that the hive is so strong that it needs to expand to another location.

A lot of beekeepers consider spring time is a stressful time because of all the swarm activities -- having half of your bees fly away often seen as a loss.  However considering the reason behind bees swarming, it is an event of celebration.  Since only a strong hive can afford to swarm, it means not only the hive survived winter but it actually flourished.

I used to get stressed out about swarms a lot, especially at the beginning of my beekeeping journey, when we were trying to grow our number of hives.  At the beginning I was taught to prevent swarms as much as possible, not truly understanding why.  Now that I have learned from other bee stewards the nature of bees and the reason behind swarming, I definitely feel more at peace about swarms.  The fact that we have reached the maximum number of hives we can handle ourselves forces me to relax about swarms.  Now I see swarms as my offering back to the Land for sharing its sweet essence with me.

Many beekeepers set up "swarm traps" to catch swarms looking for new homes -- that's one way to get "free" bees.  I have yet to have any success with swarm traps.  When we first started keeping bees, we have many times climbed on a ladder with a bucket on a stick to try to reach a cluster of bees high in the trees, and tried shaking them into the bucket to recapture the swarm.  These days we still try to catch one if we happen upon it, especially if it is fairly accessible.  I happened to see the Spring Equinox swarming in action and was able to follow the bees as they landed on a temporary resting spot.  It was a huge swarm but the bees landed in the tree not far from their home, totally reachable without having to climb ladders.  So we set up a hive box for them and shaked the bees into a bucket to move them to the new home.  I didn't video the initial process of catching the bees, but here you can see how the bees filed into the hive box once we caught the queen and put her in her new home.

It has been a week since we captured this swarm and I am happy to report that the queen and her children seem to have settled into their new home.  I will post more updates later!

We have had two more swarms that we're aware of since then.  Another one happened the very next day and the bees flew up high into the trees.  We had to let that one go...

Then we had another swarm yesterday, it's a smaller one and the bees clustered at another accessible spot.  We were able to capture the queen so were able to give the swarm a new home.

Hopefully this smaller swarm will settle into their new home as well, and I'll post updates later.