Increase in bee swarms in Basingstoke as beekeepers remove 55

Steve Delo, secretary of the association, takes calls from members of the public in the town who need a swarm removing.

So far this year, he said the association has dealt with more than 55 swarms, which he said is an increase from last year.

The association receives a small grant from Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council to provide a honeybee swarm removal service during the swarming season from May to August.

Here, he explains why bees swarm, why there might be an increase this year, and what to do if you spot a swarm.

When is swarming season?

Swarming season starts at the end of April and lasts until August, peaking in June and July.

“It’s their standard, biological behaviour at this time of year,” explained Steve, who has been a beekeeper for 11 years.

Why do bees swarm?

Steve said there are two reasons why bees swarm. He explained: “Honeybees are an organism that’s run by a queen. It’s made up of a queen, workers and drones. There’s one queen and 10 per cent drones who are male. Their only job is to mate with the queen.

"The workers are all female and their job is to look after the queen and do everything from cleaning, foraging, collecting wax and looking after the hive and queen and everything else.

“At the start of the year, a hive might have 10,000 bees in a standard normal hive. As the weather starts to improve the queen starts to build up the numbers in the hive and they can reach up to between 50,000 and 70,000.

“The queen lays 1,000 eggs a day and they only live for seven weeks. So, you can imagine the rate of building the hive goes up. As those numbers of bees build, they are taking up more space inside their hive.”

Steve said that beekeepers should monitor this and add frames to the hive to ensure there is enough space. However, he said if this doesn’t happen then the queen will have a “natural urge to reproduce the colony”.

He explained: “When the hive is nice and stable and everyone is doing well and there are lots of drones around, the queen gets a natural urge to reproduce the colony. She will want to create a new queen to replace herself.”

The queen will lay eggs that have the potential to become a queen and she will then leave the colony. 

“She will scarper taking half the hive with her and move out and that’s called swarming,” said Steve.

The second reason is simply because the bees run out of space and the entire colony leaves to look for a larger home.

Are swarming bees dangerous?

Steve explained that when the bees leave a colony to look for somewhere else, the adult bees fill their stomachs up with honey in readiness for being without food for several days as they search for an alternative location.

This means they are unable to sting because they can’t bend their bodies when their stomach is full of honey.

“When they swarm, they are actually safer to be around because they are only focused on finding a new home,” said Steve.

What are the bees doing when they swarm?

Steve receives dozens of calls from concerned members of the public at this time of year, worried about swarming bees.

He said when honeybees are found in a large swarm, clinging onto something, they are waiting while scout bees go out searching for a new hive.

He explained: “There will be hundreds or thousands looking for a new home to move into, something like a chimney or hole in a tree or your compost bin that has a hole in it. They are looking for a new home or hive with a cavity.

“They will hang around and the scouts go out looking and come back when they find somewhere. Then, hundreds of bees will check out this new home and once they’ve said ‘it’s right, we’re ready to go, it’s the perfect place to move in’ on mass they will break away and fly to their new home and move in.”

What happens when they find a new home?

Unfortunately, when the bees find a new home, this could be bad news if it is in an unsuitable location and will be too late for the Basingstoke Beekeepers' Association to help.

Steve said: “The scout bees who go looking for a new home they might find a hole somewhere that’s the perfect size for bees to get in and out of, and behind it there’s a nice big cavity. Or you might have an old house where there’s a crack in the wall for them to get in and there’s a cavity behind.

"If there’s hundreds of honeybees outside or bees buzzing around the entrance this means that there’s a colony of bees and I give the bad news that they need a professional builder and beekeeper to have them removed.”

In the best-case scenario, the bees will find an empty hive to use for their new home.

How long do bees swarm?

On a warm day, Steve said the bees will generally swarm at lunchtime. He added: “They could disappear anywhere between four hours and two days, depending on how successful they are at finding a new home.

“Sometimes the bees have gone by the time we get there and, unless they have moved into a beekeeper’s hive or tree, they have probably moved into someone’s home.”

What should you do if you spot a swarm?

Steve is urging the public to get in touch as soon as they spot a swarm, so it can be dealt with and removed before the bees find a new home.

He said: “I handle our swarm calls so they all come to me and I distribute them and triage them first. First I need to establish whether they are really honeybees.

“I have a lot of calls from people saying they have lots of bees buzzing in their lawn and there’s a hole they are going in and out of. They are bumble bees and they are perfectly harmless as long as you leave them alone. I receive a lot of false alarms where they are not honeybees.”

He added: “If it’s a classic swarm hanging off something clinging to a fence or wall and they are in a tight cluster we send a beekeeper out to collect them.

“If the public are aware of been swarms and what they look like, the quicker they report it, the quicker we can get a beekeeper out, because every one we collect is the prevention of them moving into a chimney or somewhere else.”

Why is there an increase in bee swarms this year in Basingstoke?

Basingstoke Beekeepers' Association has already dealt with 55 honeybee swarms so far this year across the borough, including one in The Malls shopping centre.

Steve said this is higher than last year. He believes it could be because of the sudden change in weather, explaining: “A lot of beekeepers had a bad winter and we lost a lot of hives. That might suggest there are less bees.

"But the weather had been really bad up until the end of April which means that a lot of beekeepers haven’t been able to get into their hives because they can’t open the hives when the weather is bad.

“So, a lot of beehives and colonies have hunkered down inside their hives and all of a sudden the weather gets warm and they will be building up inside the hive and the weather gets warm and we go from no swarms to eight in one day recently, which was a very warm day.”

How are the bees removed?

There are two approaches used by Basingstoke beekeepers to remove the bees. The classic approach involves the beekeeper knocking the swarm off whatever it is hanging to so it drops into a box or bucket below.

Steve said: “You tap them in and you put it on the ground upside down with a gap so the bees can go inside the box. If the queen falls in too, they will get the message and the other bees will be attracted in.

"You then leave it for a few hours and when all the bees have come back, including all the scouts, then the beekeeper comes back and takes them away.”

However, he said this method is not suitable when the swarm is in a busy, public location such as the one in The Malls shopping centre.

Here, the beekeeper will instead use what is called a bee vac that acts like a hoover to suck the bees into a bag.

Steve said: “Once we catch them the beekeeper will take them away and either they will keep them in one of their own hives or we give them away to other beekeepers, maybe new ones or someone has lost their bees over the winter. We have a list of members who will take a swarm.”

For more information, including how to report a swarm, visit basingstokebees.co.uk.