Over the weekend just gone Plymouth Pest Control got called out to one worried customer after coming back from holiday and finding a swarm of honey bees in one of her kitchen cupboards. Which is not the best thing to come back to, she said she just had no idea who to call as its not a normal thing to happen.
how did they get in the house?
the lady left a window open in the kitchen so what happened is a few scouts would have of noticed that and went and check out her kitchen as they had no disruption due to the lady being on holiday they decided to go back to the hive and inform the other bees that they found somewhere for up to 60% of the hive to move to. after the bees had swarmed and stettled down around 24hrs later the bees would start work on drawing out a Combe for there new home, as you can see in the picture below.
How did this happen in the Plymouth area
What happens is this time of year honey bees swarm. Swarming is the process by which a new Honey Bee colony is formed when the Queen Bee leaves the colony with a large group of Worker Bees. In the prime swarm, about 60% of the worker bees leave the original hive location with the old queen. This swarm can contain thousands to tens of thousands of bees. Swarming is mainly a spring phenomenon, usually within a two- or three-week period depending on the location but occasional swarms can happen through out the producing season. Secondary afterswarms may happen but are rare. Afterswarms are usually smaller and are accompanied by one or more virgin queens. Sometimes a Beehive will swarm in succession until it is almost totally depleted of workers.
Swarming is the natural means of reproduction of the Honey Bee colonies. In the process of swarming the original single colony reproduces to two and sometimes more colonies. The reproduction swarms of this species settle 20–30 metres away from the original nest for a few days and will then depart for a new nest site after getting information from scout bees. Scout bees search for suitable cavities in which to construct the swarm’s home. Successful scouts will then come back and report the location of suitable nesting sites to the other bees.
After moving most of the honey bees in to the box all there is to do now is wait for the remaining bees to find the queen in the box so Plymouth Pest Control can rehome the honey bees. now the job is complete we left the lady to unpack from her holiday, here at Plymouth pest control we save honey bees and not kill them unlike most other pest control companies around Plymouth. as you can see from the picture below the bees are now happy in there new home after a busy few days for them.
