After the Swarm
By Chris Tomlins
The life of the colony continues much as before when the swarm leaves except that for the next few days it will be Queenless, however all is not lost as the departing queen will with the guidance and care of the workers have left a number of new queens developing in specially built cells.
Approximately a week after the swarm departed the first of these queens will emerge from their cells strangely they are ignored by the worker's and will just wander around the hive and once their body [exoskeleton] has hardened they begin to search for other emerged or yet to emerge queens. Newley hatched queens that meet on the frame will fight until the strongest survives and those yet to emerge will be stung and killed by the surviving queen. The only time in her life that she will use her stinger.
When she is satisfied that she is the only survivor and a few days after emerging she will then leave the hive possibly accompanied by a few worker's and will fly to find male bees [Drones] with which to mate, this is done on the wing and in an area where drones congregate. The window for the virgin queen to mate is only a few days and if due to poor weather she is kept in the hive for a week or more, then she will never mate and whilst she will settle and start to lay, minus the drone semen she only lay eggs, which she cannot fertilise and will hatch as males. The colony without emerging worker bees to replace the older bees will die out unless the beekeeper intervenes and replaces the unmated queen with another fertile queen.
The young queen may undertake more than one mating flight but will take the semen from each of perhaps ten to fifteen drones in total and store it in her spermatheca until she starts to lay. Each drone the virgin mates with will die.
When the mated queen returns to the hive the workers then recognise her as their new queen and fuss over, groom and feed her, after a few days she will settle down and begin laying. She will also start to release pheromones that will pass around the hive informing the worker's that all is well and their new queen is established.
During this swarming period, which from the departure of the old queen until the new queen’s progeny start to appear will be about five weeks during which time besides the older bees which left with the swarm some of the remaining older bees will have died. It is imperative that the colony rebuilds itself as quickly as possible to gather its stores for the coming winter. Hence the wisdom of the old rhyme “A swarm of bees in May is worth a load of hay” and as the months move through June into July the swarm “is not worth a fly” as it has no time in which to establish a sizeable colony with sufficient bees, food and size of nest to survive and will die out.
The swarm that left was hopefully intercepted by a bee keeper to provide a new home for it to also build up the colony before the coming of winter. This colony will only be able to provide for its immediate needs and will not provide a small surplus for the beekeeper to take unless it was a very early swarm.
All being well there will be two colonies ready early the next spring to start pollinating flowers whilst the bumble bee's are still establishing their nest and yes they are brilliant pollinators but will never achieve the excellence of the humble honey bee.