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Wednesday, April 13, 2016 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
Tales from a
Sisters
Naturalist
by Jim Anderson
Happy as can bee
A swarm of bees can mean
many things to many people.
To the uninitiated they can
be sheer terror. “What!”
Screams Auntie Em, “We
have a swarm of bees in the
backyard! Call the police!” I
actually heard that statement
from a terror-stricken person
in Portland years back.
The fear of “The Swarm”
is perhaps one of the most
overblown old wive’s tales
still going around today.
Springtime is the season for
swarms to appear. Please
think of them as FreeBees
for the taking, and no threat
to life or limb.
That said, climate change
may be bringing us a real
reason to fear “The Swarm”:
the Africanized honey bee,
aka “Killer Bee.” This bunch
was introduced to into Brazil
in the 1950s in an effort to
increase honey production. In
1957, 26 swarms accidentally
escaped quarantine and, since
then, have spread throughout
South and Central America,
arriving in North America in
1985, and discovered in the
American Northwest in 2011.
The warmer it gets, the fur-
ther north they’ll come.
These ladies are noth-
ing to fool around with, they
have a very unpleasant way
of looking at life: everything
other than them is the enemy,
and instead of one bee com-
ing out to sting an intruder,
the whole colony’s after you.
I wouldn’t go near a swarm
from this bunch without
being inside my best bee suit
and all the seams taped shut.
But back to our own sweet
bees. Honey bees in this part
of Mother Earth are quiet,
peace-loving gentle folk who
just want to make honey and
be left alone. They will NOT
sting you for just being there;
you have to provoke them.
If you stand in front of their
home and pound on their
roof, that’ll get you what
you’re asking for.
Our European honey
bees, Apis mellifera (Apis
is Latin for “bee”, and mel-
lifera means “honey-bear-
ing”), who arrived in North
America with the Jamestown
migrants and later on with the
Mayflower Pilgrims, form
a matriarchal society; the
whole outfit is held together
by one queen. If another
queen enters the scene the
whole hive goes haywire,
and the resident queen and
her crew will try to kill the
interloper. On the other
hand, a box of bees without a
queen is a worthless mess of
confusion.
Here’s the way it seems
to work with my bees weeks
before a swarm comes buzz-
ing out: Life is going along
hummingly in my Langstroth
bee boxes; workers are mak-
ing cells in the wax foun-
dation for the queen to lay
her eggs in, and it’s running
smoothly.
When the eggs hatch,
nursery bees feed the larvae
which pupate to make more
adult bees. The workers are
coming back to the hive with
pollen, nectar and other plant
material to make honey (food
for the bees), wax and propo-
lis to hold the physical plant
together.
Old Bee-keeper Jim has
added a third box to the stack
of bee boxes so he can have
more honey (and to help the
bees store enough honey to
survive our cold winters).
But soon the action has
brought about a huge popula-
tion of bees, more than there
should be.
A wiser bee-keeper would
then “split the hive” by
moving one box of bees to
another location and placing
a new queen it; then a box
with ten empty frames is put
in its place. In no time at all,
the colony would fill it and
life would go on.
But Old Jim is a lazy bee-
keeper. He allows the colony
to become too big without
doing something about it,
and soon the pheromones of
the old queen are not strong
enough to saturate the stack
of boxes.
Because of that, several
workers shout, “The Queen
is dead!” and start building
drone (male bee) and Queen
cells. The larvae fed “Royal
Honey” become queens,
the first of which becomes
the New Queen, the other
would-be queens are killed,
and that’s when trouble starts
in the colony.
The New Queen emits a
chemical signal to the drones
and they leave the hive and
mate with her in flight. The
sperm she then contains will
last her entire lifetime, but
the fun-and-games for the
drones is over. The work-
ers will not allow them back
into the hive and they slowly
starve to death, or get picked
off by bee-predators, such as
ash-throated flycatchers.
The new queen’s phero-
mones are not the same as the
Mother Queen and soon the
new queen begins to attract
workers and a new colony
forms. The New Queen soon
has her own colony of thou-
sands and she takes over the
hive. That’s when the Old
Queen is forced to leave in a
swarm made up of anywhere
from five to 15,000 bees.
If you see them, don’t
worry; they’re happy as can
bee, stuffed with honey.
They’ll settle down in a great
ball-of-bees on the limb of
a tree, while the scouts are
already out looking for their
new home.
The only thing that can
stir them into a frenzy is
something large and hairy
(like a bear) going after them.
The queen’s deep within the
swarm, surrounded by her
entourage of workers tend-
ing her every need. If every-
thing goes right, a bee-keeper
will show up, gently remove
the limb from the tree, carry
the swarm to an empty bee
box, remove half the frames,
then gently brush or shake
photo by sue anderson
you gotta’ gather up the bees
before you can gather the honey.
the bees into the empty box.
That will happen, and you
can watch, if you call clyde@
tlcinc.com or 541-549-0998,
or jimnaturalist@gmail,
541-480-3728.
Then, if you present to
witness this operation, you
will see how cooperative a
bee colony is; several of the
workers will come to the
entrance of their new home,
turn themselves about and
fan their queen’s pheromones
outside telling the bewildered
bees buzzing about, “This is
our new home, come on in!”
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