Bees swarm and return daily

[Mumph]

Hello All
Can you help me, my bees have decided to swarm almost daily to a tree above the hive and say 5m away and then return to the hive after a few hrs. I've added a new box of supers for them, thinking they were running out of space but they are still doing it. I insepected them a week ago and there was still some room in the brood box.
Thanks for answers in advance.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Mating swarms?
Do you have a laying queen in there?

 

[Mumph]

Mating swarms?
Do you have a laying queen in there?

Thanks for replying Dani. I did have 8 frames of brood last week.

 

[hemo]

Any queen cells ?

 

[Sutty]

You don't have an excluder under the brood box do you?

 

[Mumph]

You don't have an excluder under the brood box do you?

No i have a QE between the brood box and the supers

 

[Mumph]

Any queen cells ?

There were no queen cells last week when I looked, but a few drone cells were there.

 

[ericbeaumont]

still some room in the brood box.

did have 8 frames of brood last week.

8f of brood plus a couple of stores doesn't leave much room for laying, and it's lack of laying space that is the dominant factor that will switch on swarming.

Plenty of super space will help to draw nectar up and away from the BB, but sometimes bees just dump it everywhere, like they did during this strong blackberry flow. Congestion of the brood nest = swarming.

Do they have stores? If not, may be a starvation swarm in which the queen refuses to leave (guessing).

Is the queen clipped? If so, she may have been lost the first time they came out, and are eager for a virgin to take on their journey.

How do you inspect combs?

 

[Erichalfbee]

If the queen is clipped and she went just to be lost there would be queen cells in the hive

 

[Erichalfbee]

There were no queen cells last week when I looked

When last week?

 

[Antipodes]

Lack of super space will help to draw nectar up and away from the BB,

I haven't found that to be honest.

 

[Erichalfbee]

I haven't found that to be honest.

Well it's worth considering that when we look inside the brood box during a big flow foragers are coming back so fast there will be nectar all over the place. The bees just dump it there if there aren't enough house bees to take it off them. It's moved up at night

 

[Paulypaul]

Well it's worth considering that when we look inside the brood box during a big flow foragers are coming back so fast there will be nectar all over the place. The bees just dump it there if there aren't enough house bees to take it off them. It's moved up at night

In the past couple of weeks, I've inspected colonies in 3 different apiaries, all showed a lot of backfill of nectar into brood frames, even in hives with supers of empty drawn comb.
I recon, when they're in a flow, their priority is simply to get the stuff in, ASAP. They figure out where to put it for long-term storage later.

 

[ericbeaumont]

I haven't found that to be honest.

Edited that line so that it made sense!

 

[Paulypaul]

Hello All
Can you help me, my bees have decided to swarm almost daily to a tree above the hive and say 5m away and then return to the hive after a few hrs. I've added a new box of supers for them, thinking they were running out of space but they are still doing it. I insepected them a week ago and there was still some room in the brood box.
Thanks for answers in advance.

I'm going to stick my novice neck out and suggest they may be absconding, due to a lack of lay space for the queen, and some other factor(s).
We're in a flow, which could be leading them to fill brood comb with nectar - inspect the brood comb. Do a lot of emerged cells have nectar in them?

The current strong flow could also be making your bees confident they can find a new home (with lay space) while accessing sufficient resources.

But, they keep coming back.

My highly inexperienced suggestion is to look carefully during your next inspection:

• Is there a lot of nectar in the brood comb?
  • Are there ANY stores at all in the hive?
• Make absolutely sure there are no Queen cells - have a thorough look - shake bees off frames before looking.
• Can you see any other issues inside the hive? Eg. An infestation of any pests (is Shelob hanging out in the BB?) or disease?
• Is the hive in constant sunlight but has poor ventilation? - perhaps the bees are absconding during current high temperatures and returning when temperatures drop later in the day(?)
  • Is there any bearding on the front of the hive?

It's a long shot, do the last bullet points coincide with the absconding and returning times? Have the temporary abscontions coincided with the recent high temperatures?

 

[Antipodes]

Well it's worth considering that when we look inside the brood box during a big flow foragers are coming back so fast there will be nectar all over the place. The bees just dump it there if there aren't enough house bees to take it off them. It's moved up at night

What do they do with a top entrance?

 

[Erichalfbee]

What do they do with a top entrance?

Don't know.
If there is one do the bees use the bottom entrance as well?

 

[ericbeaumont]

Can you help me

What do you reckon, Mumph? Any of these suggestions ring true?

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

What do they do with a top entrance?

they tend to use the bottom entrance for dumping fresh nectar, not the top - I have quite a few Demarees running at the moment, and in all of them there is little activity in the top entrances, the brood combs in the bottom Q+ box is full of fresh nectar (whenever you need to shake bees off them the hive gets a downpour of watery nectar) and the top box is slowly and steadily filling with honey stores.

 

[oxnatbees]

I saw this once, even though I don't clip queens. They would swarm and cluster fir a few minutes then go back in. The queen had a problem flying. About 8 days after this began, they swarmed normally, i.e. a virgin queen had hatched. They behaved normally after that.