| Swarming |
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What is swarming?For many animals, production of the posterities is related to increase of the animals. However increase of the number in a colony is important for honeybees, one of the social insects, and increase of the colonies is also important.
Honeybees swarm to increase their colonies. Swarming is very important to keep the species for the social insects.Season for the swarming
It has been a common knowledge among honeybee watchers that Japanese honeybee swarms in May and June. But, in the city area, where I explore, swarming can be observed from early April to late August. Sometimes one nest swarms twice or even more, in each spring and summer.
At the first swarming in spring, a mother queen bee and worker bees leave from the nest. The number of the swarming bees is between six thousand and ten thousand, depending on size of the original colony.
After several days from the first swarming, the second swarming can be seen. This time the elder queen bee leaves the nest and the younger one stays in the original nest. The number of bees in the second swarming colony is usually less than that of the first swarming colony. Sometimes the third swarming can be seen.
prime swarm afterswarm Although several queen stages are produced in a nest (as far as my observation, the largest number of the queen stage was 14), the colony does not swam as much as the number of the queen stage. Probably they have system to control swarming times.
In the city area, Japanese honeybee swarms again in June and July in the same way to that in spring. Honeybee breeders call it as grand-swarming, and they dislike it. I have heard an English proverb that Swarming in May worth for a cart of hey and that in July does not worth even for a bee. The honeybees do not collect honey during the swarming period and swarmed bees in the season usually cannot survive during the summer. However I know several colonies of Japanese honeybee swarmed in the season survived during summer and formed nice nests. Therefore swarming at that season is significant for Japanese honeybee.
Although you probably imagine that queen bee leads the swarming, if you watch it you see worker bees come out first and then they push the queen out of the nest. The worker bees are flying around and form swarming bee ball after 30 min, and queen bee comes out before 5 min of forming of the ball.
