How To Save A Colony Of Bees That Has Swarmed - Recover Your Hive Fast
In this tutorial Laurence Edwards explains why a strong April colony swarmed—insufficient brood‑nest space in spring—and how to confirm that a swarm has occurred by looking for the absence of a queen and eggs, and the presence of open or capped swarm cells. He demonstrates the appearance of swarm cells, emerging virgin queens, and a capped cell with a live queen pupa. Edwards then outlines three recovery strategies: (1) remove all but one swarm cell (preferably an open cell) and wait for a virgin queen to emerge and mate; (2) if all cells are capped, remove them and introduce a purchased mated queen; (3) when a virgin has already emerged, leave the cells and hope for early mating given warm weather. He follows up weeks later, showing the colony’s progress—full bee population, brood nest refilled, presence of eggs, larvae, and capped worker brood, confirming a mated queen is laying. He discusses brood pattern quality, honey and pollen storage, and tips for handling frames with a queen. The video concludes that swift action after a swarm can limit losses, restore a queen, and set the colony on a productive path for the season.
Chapters
Everybody loses swarms, and this colony of bees here has swarmed. In this video, I'm going to tell you why they've swarmed, how to tell they definitely have swarmed, and then most importantly, what to do next, how to get this colony back on track. So I have to say, I was very, very surprised with this colony here. I knew that I'd compressed them a little bit early in the season. I was busy using this colony for a separate video just to get some frames drawn out. My little mini plus clickable frames. You can see them coming out there. Now the bees have done a brilliant job of drawing out the frames, but I noticed that there were no eggs, and I thought that's a little bit strange. Like this is a big, strong, healthy April colony. It's been growing very rapidly. There should be eggs. So I started to go through the frames, and I realized that I had an issue with swarm cells. Lots of open and emerged swarm cells. So the prime swarm is long gone. No eggs, no queen, open swarm cells. That means I have lost a swarm. So this here is damage limitation. This is trying to get the colony back on track as quickly as possible with as little risk as you can manage. So the first question, why did this colony here swarm? They swarmed because I did not give them enough space in the spring. Simple as that. I should have seen the warning signs. I came up here a little bit late, managed to get the supers on all the colonies here just in time, apart from this one. Left it a bit too late, ran out of space in the brood nest, and then that's it. The queen and half the bees are off, probably into a nice tree in the forest here. That's the reason that these bees swarmed. How do I know they definitely swarmed though? Because like I said, if I'm looking at this colony here, looking at the amount of bees there, I would look at it and say, yep, all is good. That's what the colony should look like at this time of year, just about getting ready to go up into their super. But I know they've swarmed. So looking from the top is no sign, is no proof that the bees have actually swarmed. You need to see a lot more than that. So there's a few signs that you're looking out for when you're doing your inspections. You like to look for the queen, you like to look for eggs, I certainly do anyway. If I don't see eggs, I'm always a little bit concerned. If I don't see eggs and I don't see the queen, I'm looking for capped swarm cells. Worst case scenario, I'm looking for open swarm cells as well, as in swarm cells that have already emerged. We have found pretty much everything in this hive, so it's a good opportunity for me to show you what all of those things look like now. So because there are open queen cells in this colony here, one of the things that we're very likely to see in this hive is a virgin running around on the frame. So as I'm going through, if I see that virgin, I'll come over and I will show you her. So this is a brilliant frame. Let me show you this frame here. So what we have on the bottom of the frame here is swarm cells. And don't let people tell you they're swarm cells because they're on the bottom here. They're swarm cells because the number of them that's in the colony. I've counted about 15 in this colony here. These are open and emerged swarm cells. So that's probably the best example that I can show you there. That is a swarm cell. So it has opened and emerged and a virgin has come out. So if you are seeing that, you are in damage limitation mode. There is a virgin running round. I will give you the advice on how to fix that at the end of the video. But if you're seeing that, your bees have 100% swarmed if there are multiple cells like that in the hive. But look at this. We have got a capped swarm cell still, but there is something so special about this capped swarm cell. The queen inside is still alive. Starting to chomp her way out. And oh my goodness, I can't miss that. So we'll keep that until the end of the video. What you're seeing down here as well, that is where they're starting to chew away the side. So see where the other virgin had emerged? Once the virgins start to emerge, they do tend to take down the substandard cells and they might leave up a really nice ripe one like that. You'll see that very often though. So that one there, the virgin hasn't come out of that. The bees have gone in on the side and killed the queen pupa. So that is the queen cell there where I think a queen is just about to emerge. You can see the bees are very, very interested in it. They can probably sense that there's a queen inside and they are just ready for that bit of action. This one here, that is the one where if you're seeing that, your bees have swarmed. So that is a perfectly ripe, nicely dimpled swarm cell. A queen has chewed her way around that section there and she has released herself. So as I said, if you're seeing that, your bees have swarmed. It's then a case of going through and looking for virgins wherever you can. You have to go through every single frame. It is Challenge. These cells that you're seeing here, these are swarm cells, but you can see you've not got that nice perfect circle at the bottom. That means it's likely that these bees have taken down some of these cells here. So they're the dead giveaways: no queen, no eggs, and the presence of swarm cells. If you're in the situation that I am in here, you need to make a decision. Are you going to let the virgins that are emerging from these cells go out and mate on their own? And if you are going down that route, my advice for you is as follows: take down every single cell that. that is in the colony barring one and just leave one cell there. Even if you've got emerged cells, leave that other cell as a backup. If you are going in and you find no eggs, no queen, and you find all capped swarm cells, same advice applies. Take down all of them except the very best one, preferably one that is still open so you can see the nice young chubby larva inside. And then you wait 4 weeks, come back, and hopefully all of your problems are solved. You have a queen, eggs, brood in all stages, and all is good. The other option that you have if all of the cells are capped is you take down every single cell and then you take a look at the products underneath this video here and you select yourself a mated queen from Black Mountain Honey. And then because you've taken down all of those cells, you're immediately hopelessly queenless and you can just insert that queen into your colony and you are back to normal very, very quickly. However, that leaves us with the trickiest of all the scenarios, which is this one here because the virgin has already emerged. So I don't have the option of taking down all of those cells because even if I did, I'm not hopelessly queenless because there is a virgin in here. So what I'm going to do on this colony Here is I'm just going to leave them and see if we can get some matings early on in the year. It's the 22nd of April today, but it is very warm. Forecast for the next two or three weeks is exceptional, so I think we're going to have some good mating weather. We had a nice queen in here as well, so we'll see how we get on with an F2 buckfast from this colony. So we've spoken about why they swarmed. We've spoken about how I know they've swarmed, and we've spoken about some scenarios on how to fix it. Let's just go back at the end now. Take a look at that virgin queen that's going to emerge. I cannot wait for. So there is a queen in this cell here. You can tell by the way the bees are reacting, but you can also tell by the way— if I can just get the bees out of the way here— how that queen has started to chomp around that edge there. There we go. Give myself a little bit of space with the blow. So you can see she started to chomp that. So if I just really gently open that up now, hopefully we'll get the emergence of a virgin queen. So I saw that cell opened up a bit easy as I was going in. What's happened is the queen has chewed her way round, come out, the door's opened. As she's exited, it's flicked back. The bees have started to repair it and stick it down. There was nothing in that cell. Oh my God, I thought that was going to be the best clip ever. What it does mean though is there is a virgin in this colony here. Let's take a look, see if I can find her now. So I've seen more cells being open here. You can see another one there with a tab open. Could potentially be multiple queens in this colony, and there is nothing that I can do about it. So there is one of the virgins running around. You can see her. That one there. So if you're going through your colony, you're thinking, where is the queen? Where's the virgin? Take a look from here. Can you see her now? And I'll zoom back in for you. She is right there. Difficult to spot, isn't it? So you can see why I give the advice to a lot of people, just take down all of the queen cells, because you have to be pretty good to be able to see the virgins in colonies like this. You know, once they're hiding underneath it, very, very difficult to see. But there we go, at least we found her. So one virgin queen, and doesn't she look nice? So there we go, one virgin queen going back into the colony now. Let's fast forward 3 weeks and hopefully that virgin queen goes out and gets mated. So it's been about 10 days since this colony swarmed. Let's get in and see what is going on. So still got a full box of bees, which is brilliant. They're not cast away to nothing. If anything, I'd say they've probably grown a little bit since last time with all of that brood still emerging. So a nice big strong colony of bees. Temperament seems very, very good as well, at least for now. And they are certainly backfilling that brood nest with nectar there. So I can see how people get caught out with swarms and then they get caught out with being very honeybound as well at the same time. But so long as you provide space above the queen excluder, when the queen does come in to lay, all of the capped stores in there can be moved up if you go in and uncap it. They generally won't keep uncapped stores in the colony like this for too long if there's space above And the queen needs to lay. But if you've not got a laying queen, they'll just keep it all down there and you can get yourself into a mess. So I'm not really looking for anything, just want to see the state of play at the moment, see how much space they've got. Like, I'm crossing my fingers that I might see a virgin, or even more than that, I might see some eggs. But I'm seeing some really positive signs on here. So I can see kind of in the center of the frame around here, they're not backfilling it, they're not putting nectar in there. The cells are really nice and polished. What that means is they're expecting a new queen, a mated queen, to come back and lay in there at some point in the near future. And with the weather as it is at the moment, I'm confident that we're going to see something very good on this colony. So definitely not lost any cast swarms, can't see a queen, they're polishing the cells. I'm crossing my fingers. I'll be back in about 2 or 3 weeks. I reckon we're going to come back to a mated queen and a colony that is back on track. So it's been a few weeks now since we found emerged queen cells in this colony that have swarmed. I've just left the bees to it. Let's go in now, see if we can find that queen. More importantly, see if we can find eggs and capped worker brood. So we got bees venturing up into the super, only just though, but that is a very good sign. They wouldn't do that if they cast again. And if you're wondering what cast means, when a colony swarms for the first time of the year, the swarm that exits is called a prime swarm. Doesn't matter whether that's with a virgin or a mated queen, but generally the prime swarm will take out the overwintered mated queen, But all the prime swarm means is it's the first swarm to leave in the year, and then any subsequent swarms that go off after that are called cast swarms. And cast swarms are generally headed by virgins that are emerging from the cells that we found in here. That's why we knock down all of the cells and just leave one open cell, because then that means the bees won't cast. So you just lose the prime swarm, you don't lose the cast swarms. I'm pretty confident we've not lost any cast swarms here. Now sometimes with beekeeping you just get a bit of a sixth sense. I'm looking at the weather. I know the chances are going to be high for a successful mating, but just looking at the bees and the temperament and the way they're working and filling that box and coming up, I would stake my reputation that we're going to find eggs in here. And depending on the timings, I would say we're going to find capped worker brood as well, maybe around one of these middle frames. Let's jump straight in and see if I'm right. And for anyone who's thinking he's definitely going to be right, he knows what he's talking about, I'm very regularly wrong, but I think we're going to find eggs here. So we found exactly that. Not capped worker brood, but definitely got eggs inside these frames here. See if we can zoom right into one of those cells. But I can see eggs and I can see larvae, so lots of open brood. But open brood doesn't tell us much at the moment apart from telling us that there is a queen in there. Could be a dud queen, could be a drone laying queen, could be laying workers, could be any of those. We want to see capped worker brood in a nice pattern, and then we've got a successful mite tick. So that is a beautiful frame of pollen. Definitely give you a close-up of that. It's not capped worker brood, but it's pretty good. Do love a good frame of pollen. Bees go out, they store pollen, feed it to the young bees. It's the way of getting protein, and without it, the colony cannot grow or survive. So I think I've stained my reputation a little bit too early here. All I'm finding is lots and lots of honey. It's not even nectar anymore. Like, it is fully capped over. And you will often find this. And this is a question that I get a lot from people saying, are the bees going to move that? Here's a simple way of answering it. If there is a queen laying there, they will move this uncapped and they will not move this capped. In order to get them to move this as well, you need to bruise this with a hive tool. So you just kind of smudge it. Technical term is a smudge. You basically just run your hive tool over the top of it, and then you place it in between frames of brood, and the bees will move it from the brood box up into the super. But everything towards me is just getting more and more honey. So let's go the other way. At least we've got a frame of eggs and larva. And as I say, that's the real thing that we're looking for here. Not seeing capped brood doesn't mean there's anything wrong. Just means I may be a week early coming as you in this video. But oh no, look! At that frame there, lots and lots of open larva. And I can tell just looking at those larva that they are worker larva. And on that side we have the beginnings of some cappings. So what you can see over here is the beginning of the capping of that worker brood. Always looks a bit like drone brood at the beginning. You think, oh, is it going to be drone? But as soon as you get a big full frame of it, you can quite easily see that it is worker brood. So I'm confident we've got a mated queen in there laying worker brood. But let's take a look at the rest of the frames. Maybe there is a better sign. And there we go. We have got our frame of worker brood. So not the best pattern, but I never judge a queen on her first lay. Always takes them a little while. But what I can confidently say is we've got a mated queen in there. She's laying worker brood. I'll keep on top of that though, because it's not the best pattern. But I think a subsequent week it should be slightly better. And if you're wondering what I'm talking about with a good pattern, we'll just flash up on screen now what a good brood pattern looks like, where it's nice and tight in the middle. You've got brood all in the middle. And then it spreads out to lava and eggs all around the edge. So we probably shouldn't finish the video without showing you the queen. I'm going to get in here now and I find her. So there's the queen on that frame. I'll zoom back a little bit, see if you can see her. I'll give you a clue: he is on this side. For those who have not seen her, she has just taken it upon herself to go around the other side there. She is now here. So there's my queen. And as you can see, still a little bit flighty. Don't like it when they move around the frame like that. She will calm down. She's only freshly mated. But you do find that with queens, just as they're coming into lay like that, they can get a little bit flighty. She's calmed down now. You can see her pulsing because she wants to go and lay. And she's thinking, who is that guy with the big camera? But there we go. One mated queen. Just a little tip when you're putting frames back into a colony with a queen on it like that. Never put the queen back when she's on the edge of the frame. Always make sure she's right in the middle or the face of the frame. Obviously, this frame's a bit of a weird one. Just means you've got a much better chance of getting her in without crushing her. The other way of doing it is picking her up like that and putting her in. And I can see she's moved down now, so all good. Final frame, I always like to shake off as well because I don't crush any bees as I put the frame back in like that. And that's it. We've reached the end of the video. We had a colony that swarmed. I found an emerged swarm cell. I knocked down all of the cells to stop cast swarms going out. The queen's gone out, she's got mated, she's come back, and the colony is successfully back on track. It's like the 8th of May at the moment, so this colony here has already got half a super of honey on it. You can imagine for the rest of the year, the sky is the limit. If your colony swarms, take action, limit your losses, get them back on track, and the bees will thank you. 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