During this time of year, if the hive is really full of food and really full of bees and the queen has laid plenty of fresh eggs and it's a colony that has survived over winter it will have a tendancy to swarm. Swarming is where the queen decides her work here is done and just packs her bags and leaves, about maybe 2/3rds of the bees will follow her.
Those who remain behind will have a period of a few days to raise a new queen out of the eggs the queen left, or die.
Apparently, they've now filmed hives in the hours prior to swarming and they follow distinct humming patterns leading up to the swarm bursting out.

This is the natural means by which bees have propogated across the earth. Beekeepers aren't fans of this mechanism, cow farmers wouldn't want to sit and watch over half their cows just wander off for instance, but it's just how bees do it. It's part of the job, if you like, to keep your hives in ways where either they don't swarm or you make sure you're ready for when it does swarm and you recapture the swarmed bees, which actually can be a lot easier than you would imagine.

thats why you need to level up to be able to keep wasps

end-game =

I just started googling wasp keeping. Yeah people actually do that. I've stopped reading about it. I'm already trying to stuff information into my head about what bees do I don't want to confuse myself with things that wasps do.
You should try wasp keeping though. I've no idea how or why, but go right ahead. It seems that wasp venom is a marketable product.

don't get me started on them wasps

can you keep bumblebees. bumblers are so n1 cuddly

Fuck Bunk every answer is very informative however they keep raising more questions! How exactly do you recapture a swarm of bees?

(If you really cbf answering btw just say so and ill search it up myself. Just thought if anything explaining may actually help you remember all this stuff and become more knowledgeable in the subject whilst helping the litheye community in the process)

ty

no ther r 2 big

honey bees r nice cause they r like hi i make honey then u steal it off me i will sting u and kill myself because u r steal my shit

whereas wasps r like hi i am a complete faggot and just sting u because i can OwEnD LOL

Well a swarm of bees is doomed on it's own. It needs to find a place to live, away from things that would eat bees.
When a hive swarms the queen is flying. This is one of the two times a queen will fly. The other is soon after birth, for mating purposes. The queen is also larger than the normal bees. So basically you have this big bee, that has very little flying experience. She's not very good at it.
So she leaves the hive and will get tired pretty quick, so typically she will just go for the first piece of dark shade she sees, drainpipe, tree limb, house eves, anything like that. Once there, all the bees will land with her and there they sit. Scouts are sent out from there to find a good place for a home. Once the scouts are back and the voting is done, the swarm will move to the proposed home and try to make a home out of it, or maybe just set up home right there where they first landed.

In addition to this, bees are "friendly". That is, they're not generally aggressive. A bee will really only sting you in defense of the hive, or if you leave it no other choice like capturing it in your closed hands or inadvertently in your shirt.

A swarm is, as I say, bees with no hive. They left that hive, they don't have one, if they don't have one, they can't sting you in defense of it. In that respect a swarm of bees is the most placid and timid state you will ever hope to find bees. Since they will be clumsily clinging to whatever the queen landed on, they are likely easily removed from it.

The procedure for catching bees is varied on the situation, but the simplest case is a bee swarm in a tree hanging usually to the underside of a branch or limb.

1. Get a box.
2. Cut a hole in the box. (An air hole, but I wanted a dick in the box reference here)
3. Put the box under the bees.
4. Pull the branch down.
5. Let go of the branch.
6. Quickly put the lid on the box before they get time to figure out what just happened and fly off.

If the remaining uncaptured bees cling to the branch, you failed, the queen is still up there, try again. If they cling to the box, well done, you just caught a swarm. Take it to a new hive and tip the bees into it.

It's funny if you find that the bees weren't a swarm and they were living wild with comb attached to the tree though, because that's bees with a hive and when you twang the branch they will fuck your shit right up.

u try ur swarm catching technique with these lol