How I Saved a Swarmed Hive | Recovering a Colony After Losing Half Its Bees

This colony of bees has swarmed due to lack of space. In this video, I'm going to show you how to identify if this has happened to you, but also I'm going to show you how to fix it. So this nuc box here was ready for a customer. I was going out doing the final inspections. They're coming to collect it tonight, and I've gone through it and there are loads of swarm cells in there, capped swarm cells. The queen has obviously gone. We keep plenty of nucs here, so the customer has got another nuc, no problem. I thought I would just show you inside as to what happens when a colony has not got enough space and they try and swarm. First up though, let me show you how I know the colony has swarmed. So we open it up and there are loads and loads and loads of bees. Bees in the lid, bees in the feeder, but that's not the sign that they've swarmed. Often you'll come back and be like, where have all the bees gone? Like, they were full of bees and now there's only 50% of the bees that are there. This is a very strong swarmed colony. They would have been huge. The original mated queen, the F1 Buckfast and Black Mountain honey, is probably off in a tree somewhere now, taken a good portion of the bees here. But because of the ratio for capped brood to the volume of the colony, they replenish the bees within like a week. So you might not notice it happened just by a reduction in the number of bees. And as you can see, this one here is rammed. Let me get in though and show you why I know they have definitely swarmed. So whenever I take a frame out of a colony, first thing I'm ever looking for is I'm going in and I'm looking for eggs. I have been through every single frame in this colony already and there are no eggs whatsoever. So I've either got a failing queen or they have swarmed. So as soon as I see no eggs, I get worried and I think, right, I want to find that queen. I've been through Every single frame multiple times and I cannot find the original marked queen. So this is what the frames are looking like. Lots and lots of bees, lots of emerged brood. But what you would expect to see here is kind of back once all of this brood here is emerged. Hilarious, I've just uncovered another 2 swarm cells there. But this area here, I would expect to see the queen going back and laying that up with eggs. There is nothing being backlaid into that there. They have definitely swarmed. So then you start pulling out frames and you're like, right, they've gone. Lots and lots of capped swarm cells. Plenty of bees though still, and bees that have taken advantage of a dandelion flow there, you can see. And you know what? Quite well tempered as well. Normally when a colony swarms and they leave it without a queen, even if they've got queen cells, they become like quite angry. And it is a bit overcast and a bit rainy here today, so the bees are behaving quite well. And as I say that, they're like bubbling up a little bit, but they're not, they're fine. So then you start seeing frames like that and okay, we need to get to this point now. Let's fix this colony because they quite clearly swarmed. So I'm going to show you a little bit of how we fix it, and then we'll come back to look at those cells. You'll see why in a second. So what you want to do if you've just got all capped swarm cells like this, you want to take down every single capped swarm cell except one, put the whole hive back together again, come back in 4 weeks, and cross your fingers that you have a lovely mated queen, eggs, brood in all stages, and everything is good. And hope that you don't come back to either drone-laying queen, laying workers, Or just a failed virgin that's not gone out and mated yet. So back at the colony that swarmed, let's get inside to see what they're doing. So you can see a very big, strong, healthy colony still. Not always the case that you go in and they're like, wow, where have all those bees gone? There's still a really healthy amount of bees in this nuc, and you might come in and not even realize that they'd swarmed. So let's take a look at what frames we've got in here now. So we've still got some brood that's ready to emerge, capped brood, but everything else in here is nectar. Wow. Crazy, crazy nectar bound here. I'm going to have to upgrade this colony to a beehive to finish the video. There is just not enough space. And they're at risk of going again and swarming again, probably with a virgin. Wow. Let's take a look, see if there's any more space towards the middle. Okay, that looks a little bit better. More space on that frame there. I just need a few days to see if we can get this queen mated. I'd much prefer to wait until she was successfully mated and then hive them up. But that frame there, again, huge amount of nectar coming in, backfilling. All of the cells have been taken down at this point. So if you don't get in there quick, they do take it down. They don't leave any evidence. Check out the fanning activity there. The queen might be out on a mating flight. I'm going to be really, really quick. I have to say, from that fanning behavior, I think she probably is. So I'm going to put it all back together. No sign of any queen cells. Couldn't find a virgin. Lots and lots of bees. Fanning behavior. Complete lack of space. I think within a week we're going to see eggs within this colony. Let's fast forward and see how it goes. So view from the entrance. Even though this nuc here has swarmed, We have got bearding. So the bees are clustering up underneath the front of the nuc there. So for me, that can mean one of 3 things. One, they've run out of space. 2, they're trying to swarm again. Or 3, and what I think it is, is that the queen has gone out on a mating flight, taken out a few bees, and they are just clustering up waiting for her. But they're incredibly congested inside. They really do need some space. So I'm going to get them from a nuc now into the beehive. Really straightforward procedure. You lift up the nuc, Place it up there. You replace it with a full-size beehive. Got a Payne's beehive here, and then you just place the frames over one by one and occasionally let all of the bees come back in the entry if you're working in front of it. So still lots and lots of bees in there. They're not completely swarmed. Might have swarmed. Let's have a look and see what we can see. So frame full of bees. Not really expecting to see a huge amount today other than six frames of nothing. And maybe some nectar. All I'm doing is just transferring across, and hopefully all of those bees on the front of the entrance do signify a mating flight. It's about 24 degrees here today. It is really, really nice and warm. And I know whenever I talk about temperatures, people from the warmer side of the pond, I think, do laugh because they say, "Oh, 24—that's cute," they say. But for the UK, 24 is very, very warm, and I love it. You'll never, ever, ever hear me complaining about the heat. Warmer the better. So just while I put that last frame in, never like to squeeze my last frame in, squeeze it in at the edge. I can hear intense roaring over here, bees fanning their wings. Almost certainly got a queen out on a mating flight. So let's shake them back in. Hopefully she'll go back into the same beehive, but what can you do? They needed the space. So we've got bees inside the nuc. Bees on the front of the nuc and bees on the bottom of the nuc. Let's try and get them all in in a couple of blows. So intense fanning going on. I'm going to get out of the way, leave them to it. I really want this queen to come back. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to replace the slate in the exact same position with the hope that the queen comes back in and she can recognize this hive because of the slate. Fingers crossed. We'll see what happens. I'm confident we'll come back here and we'll find a mated queen with eggs and worker So it's been a few weeks since I last went into this beehive here. I actually need to move this one here now because I'm putting a different stand in this apiary. I thought perfect opportunity to do a final checkup on this hive here, see if that queen's gone out and got mated, see if we've got eggs, see if we've got capped brood, see if everything is back to normal after this colony swarmed unexpectedly. So you can see here about 3 weeks later the number of bees is relatively similar. That's because all of the brood had previously emerged and there was no new brood coming through to create additional bees. So this is perfectly normal. When I'm going back in 3 or 4 weeks later after doing any sort of split like this, I'm looking for 2 things and 2 things only. First off, I want to see eggs. If I'm seeing eggs, brilliant. However, if you're seeing eggs and lots of drone brood, something has gone wrong. You need to see 2 things for it to have gone well. You need to see eggs and you need to see capped worker brood in a nice pattern. If you're seeing both of those things, it's been a great success. Let's get in, see if we can see those things in this colony. So all my sheets of foundation that were in there before have been beautifully drawn out there. Absolutely lovely. Just looking on that outer frame there, nothing to show on that outer frame other than some nectar. And I'm just having a look for that third thing that I'm obviously going to be looking for, which is the queen. Don't need to see the queen though. If you're seeing eggs, you're seeing capped worker brood, all is good. Hopefully we can find the queen too though, because it's always nice to see the queen. So if you remember previously on this colony, they were a bit buzzy on me as well. They're definitely more chilled out now. Even late, it's about 7 o'clock in the evening, all of the bees are in. If they were going to be angry with me, now is the time they would be angry with me. But they're not. They're very Very chilled out, which is a good sign. So generally, when you're looking at colonies and you're trying to find that first round of eggs, it's going to be somewhere around here, somewhere in the middle. I suspect on one of these three frames here. So it is very, very difficult to show you this on camera, but that is a frame completely full of eggs. And also something I can show you on camera on here though is a queen bee as well. So let's show you this queen. So there's my queen, beautiful orange queen there running around. And hopefully you can see in there as well, we've got some eggs. Right, so we've seen the queen, we found some eggs. What we want to see now is some capped brood in a nice pattern. So there, just another frame of eggs and another frame of eggs. And whilst I've got frame after frame after frame of eggs, still not got any capped worker brood. So I'm a good few days away from those eggs turning into larva and then the bees capping them over to signify the completion of this manipulation and to get the bees on track. I'm going to collect these bees up. I'm going to take them off to a new apiary site, and we're going to finish the video off there. See you at the new apiary. So it's been 2 weeks. I've taken this hive to a new apiary. Let's get inside and see if that queen is mated and see if the colony is back on track. So I've got the super on this colony here, as you can see, but the bees have started to just come up into it. A few bees up there, but not doing any work just yet, which is to be expected. And then if I remove the queen excluder, we've got a pretty packed beehive here, and it's going to be more packed than normal because of how cold it is today. It is freezing. Remember, all we're looking for today is we want to see capped worker brood. We've already seen eggs, we've not seen the queen, but I'm going to hit all 3 of those today and we'll close off this video. So I'll look for capped worker brood, I'll look for the queen, mark her if we can, see if we can see some eggs, and then this colony is back on track. So first frame coming out, beautiful capped stores. I say capped, it's capped over in that corner and then open on the rest, but the bees are working that really nicely. Not going to be long until that is completely capped over. Next frame, more of the same. Lots of stores. So changing a little bit there. We've got stores, we've got open stores, capped stores, a little bit of pollen as well. You can see all the pollen there in that frame. But still got my capped ring of stores. Right, this is what we want to see. Next up, a frame of brood in all stages. Now although that looks incredibly positive, it still doesn't tell you what you need to know. Once that brood is capped over, it could be drone brood. And to show that this colony is back on track, we need a good pattern of worker brood. So we're not there yet. All right, next frame along, we've got lots of stores and lots of pollen again, making me work hard, this hive, to prove that it's back on track. So this is the frame that we wanted to see. So what's so good about this frame here? It's a frame of brood in all stages, but with a particular focus on that capped brood element. If I just blow the bees off, just move them out of the way and show you that there This is what's signifying to me that we have got a successful mating. Beautiful pattern, lovely capped worker brood. That has been a success. Let's see if there's any other frames in there first though. So another frame full of pollen. That is the frame that finishes it. Look at the pattern on that one. Just what we wanted to see. If you're going back into your colony after a few weeks of them swarming and you see this again, you know a virgin has gone out, she's got mated, and your colony is back on track. So finding that capped worker brood was the most important thing we needed to do today. We can tick that off the list. Still want to see some eggs, and I still want to see the queen. So let's carry on looking, see if we can find them. And another one as well. Wow, she has really made the most of it, this queen. She has laid up every single frame. So the queen is somewhere on that frame there. See if you can see her. Do a little bit of zooming in, see if I can zoom into exactly where she is. Big chubby orange queen, 2025. Let's get her marked up with a nice Blue spot. So there we go. My queen is marked. She is an F2 Buckfast queen, the daughter of an F1 Buckfast queen. We'll see how she goes. She is a beautiful golden queen though. Got her blue spot on her there. She's doing a bit of a dance, has to get the eggs through. All of those bees tending to her, a lovely retinue of bees. I love it when they pulse like that. So then the final thing I wanted to see was a frame of eggs, but I didn't really need to see that. I saw capped worker brood, I saw the queen, I knew everything was good. Shake those bees off, and hopefully around the edges here you can see that we have got eggs all the way throughout that frame, hatching out into larva. All the way through there is brood in all stages. So I hope you found that video useful. If you have a colony of bees that has swarmed, you know that they can bounce back, and it's not that much work to get them back to this If you enjoyed that video, the biggest compliment you can pay me is sharing it on social media.