In this instructional video, the presenter describes a dramatic swarm event detected by a HiveWatch monitor, where roughly 4 kg of bees left the colony and the queen likely swarmed as well. He walks through the aftermath, showing frames that still contain large honey stores but very few bees, and explains the imminent risk of colony failure if the remaining virgin queen does not mate successfully. The core recovery plan involves locating and killing the failed virgin queen, then introducing a new F1 Buckfast queen from Black Mountain Honey, monitoring for successful release (eggs, larvae, capped brood), and prioritising colony health over honey harvest. He stresses the importance of leaving honey untouched during recovery, using the 14‑Day Beekeeper programme principles, and implementing preventative measures (space management, genetics) to minimise future swarming. The video concludes with the colony back on track, a realistic expectation of reduced honey yield, and encouragement for beekeepers to diagnose and fix problems promptly.
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This hive here sent me an email last week and they said, I'm really sorry, but we have swarmed. Now that might sound like science fiction, but that is the truth. In this video, we're gonna look inside this hive and I'm gonna show you why all is not lost, but there's some very important steps that we need to follow. Time to get inside and take a look. So that is exactly what happened with this beehive here. It is set up on my HiveWatch monitor, and what happened was a massive amount of bees, 4 kg of bees, just decided to go off and swarm, and they landed in a tree over there. Now, I managed to go out, retrieve that swarm, something that we cover in great detail on 14 Day Beekeeper. But what is left behind here is a huge reduction in bees. You'll see there I'm pulling out the frames, I'm looking in, and we're seeing empty supers, but only empty supers down until the second one here. We get to the The second super from the bottom there, and I'm pulling out the frames, and okay, there's not that many bees on the frames anymore, but look how much honey is there. They're capping this over. That's probably about 4 pounds in weight, and I can see across the box here that it is literally full to the brim with honey. It's only the outer edge frame there that's not got anything in it, but that frame, nice and heavy. This frame is also nice and heavy. If I was to lift this entire super up, I'm guessing maybe 20, 25 pounds of honey just in this one here. And now I've reversed the boxes, but even this bottom box, the bees are heavily working it. And look, there's tons and tons of honey still. So while swarming might set your colonies right back, what's more important is how you set them up going forward again, because this colony here is at massive risk of failure. It might look okay at the moment. It might look like we've got a couple of supers of honey and we've got a brood box full of bees and all is okay. But almost certainly what has happened down here is that the majority of the bees have gone, the queen has gone, and there will be a single virgin queen running around this hive. Now, if that queen doesn't go out and get successfully mated and come back, then every single bee in this colony will die. The colony will dwindle. The robbing bees, the wasps will come in, they'll decimate the brood nest first, move upstairs, steal all of the honey out of the supers. You won't be going back in and finding frames like this, you'll just have bare dry wax where the bees have been attacked. So your job is really, really simple if your colony swarms. It's making sure that you're able to get the colony successfully through to the next stage. Forget about the honey, forget about the supers, forget about getting it into the jars. Focus on recovering the colony and making sure that they can protect themselves, making sure that they're a cohesive, healthy unit. And this is one of the fundamental beliefs that we have in our 14-Day Beekeeper Programme. Now, I came back to this colony about 3 or 4 days ago. I found the failed virgin that was in there, and I took Action. I killed the queen, I added in a brand new F1 Buckfast queen from Black Mountain Honey, and today we're going to go in and check and see if she's been successfully released from the cage. If this introduction is successful, that should be enough to get the colony back on track. I'm also going to be super careful with the amount of honey that I take off for the spring, and I would recommend in pretty much most circumstances you do not take anything off whatsoever. Leave them with what they've got, focus on getting that brood nest back to the condition that it needs to be in, because otherwise the colony will fail and it will fail rapidly. So this is the point, I think, where a lot of people start their journey towards giving up beekeeping. If you're not able To go into a brood nest like this and find that virgin queen and kill her and introduce a new queen like that. There is no way of getting this colony back on track. Now luckily that queen's been introduced. I can see eggs, I can see larvae, I can see capped brood in the right pattern. So we're all back on track now. So maybe this colony was set for £150 of honey throughout the season and maybe I only get £50 or £60 now. But I think if you offered that up to a lot of beginner beekeepers and you said, well, The colony swarmed, and now instead of getting 150 pounds, you're just going to get 60 pounds of honey. And here's how to get it back on track. More importantly, to make sure it gets through the winter. They'd probably take that offer. Now, these are the kind of things that we go into in great detail on 14 Day Beekeeper. But I'm really pleased to report that this colony here is now completely back on track. I'll commence with my weekly inspections and try to make sure that they don't swarm again. I'll keep on managing space upstairs in the supers. But I do find that once you've lost that first main swarm and taken the correct preventative action, The chances of swarming again in the season using the correct genetics of bees should be very, very low. Now, even though this colony is emailing me and telling me that they are swarming, I've still got really high hopes, and I think with the correct weather, the correct forage, and a little bit of TLC, we can get this colony back to where it needs to be. So beekeeping doesn't always go to plan. What is so much more important is being able to go in, understand what's gone wrong, and fix it before it becomes a problem.
