#bee swarming

[adragonsoulants]

Forgot to share this crazy happenstance of events. So my family and I keep honey bee's, last year I developed an allergy to their stings but that's not important to this story.

Gonna put a break here but there's pics of bees swarming below the cut if you're interested!

So we have a little homemade green house out by our beehives and I was in there planting some gourd seeds that finally started to sprout ( 2/10 so far 😭) and while I was out there I was like "why do the bees sound like they've been getting louder?" Figured it was just me and didn't pay much mind.

Then I turn to leave the green house and see loads of flying around!! Startling! Caught them right as they were starting to swarm. I go in to talk with a family member about it but we've only had this happen once before and we didn't know till it was too late and haven't had a hive make it over the winter since. I decided to head back out and see what they're doing now a few mins later and sure enough! They were in fact swarming and had clustered on a nearby tree right in easy reach for us!

They were really weighing down those branches, I think one cluster fell off because of the weight haha.

Sadly in the rush of things I left my phone inside while changing so I wasn't able to get any more photos of the process but it's a pretty simple one.

I'll try to explain it!

So basically we go grab an empty hive and put it under the clusters and just shake them off into the box haha.

If we had a little thing to put the queen we would go looking for her first (though we've never been good at that) so that we can be sure she got in. It kinda looks like those plastic hair clips with the claws, but like to hold a bee haha.

We know the queen is in the hive once other worker bees literally start marching into the box, highly recommend looking up a video of it, it's wild they just form a line walking right in. Other bees will stick their butts in the air and use their wings to fan out pheromones for other bees to find the nest.

After we get most the bees in we close up the top, we did put in some frames with some honey on them to give them a little boost and entice them to stay ;)

During the whole process the bees are surprisingly chill! Swarming bees (assuming they aren't of the killer bee variety) are! They have no brood or honey to protect at this point and are really exposed.

We had gone and checked our other hives as well as the one this came from to see if any others were about to swarm and they are all remarkably chill as well, we suspect whatever pheromones the swarming hive gave off was also affecting the other hives.

Oh and to add the hive that had swarmed had already FILLED with honey?! ITS NOT EVEN JUNE!! We gave them an extra honey medium and even took two frames out of their brood deeps that were just honey and scored them to uncap them so that the honey would be recollected by all the hives. And we replaced them with empty frames for them to hopefully put brood on this time.

Also the photo above, they aren't trying to establish a home there. They're collecting there to wait for scouts to come back and tell them about potential new locations for their home. Figured I should add that.

Also when a hive swarms they more like splitting into 2 hives. The one that leaves has the current queen that they've been training and getting ready for this. And the old hive is in the process of making a new queen with premade queen cells and they feed the larva a very rich honey, often called Royal Jelly, to turn what would just be a worker into a queen.

These little bugs really plan this shit out.

So anyways that evening we went to check on them and make sure they were still in the box and sure enough they're still hanging around!

You might also notice that doesn't look like a typical wooden hive box. It's made of styrofoam so it's lighter than the traditional wooden nest while also being like 10x more insulating.

It gets pretty cold in the winter here with a lot of temperature fluctuations, lot of melt and freeze, and some strong northern winds so it helps them out in the winter.

Thanks for reading this word dump!

[sparklings-husband]

(closed 2/15/25)

f/o reblog game

reblog this post with 1-2 of your f/os and i'll assign them a bee from bee swarm simulator that reminds me of them! (any kind of f/o, romantic, platonic, familial, etc)

example: hasty bee for my husband sparkling cookie ^ ^

[razztazzel]

Guys I love bees

Runner up

Don’t kill me AAGGHH (based on my general like of the bee not like… in game stat wise)

[botanyshitposts]

ah to be a fat bumblebee in a pollinator garden or restored prairie…..

[osc-news]

Following the success of the Regretevator collab, Jacknjellify has announced collaborations with more Roblox games.

[lowpolyanimals]

Frog from Bee Swarm Simulator (Roblox)

[vaguely-concerned]

game mechanic wise I find it kind of annoying, but incredibly endearing that emmrich indicates that the reason wisps fade away if you take too long to lead them somewhere is because you've exceeded their attention span fhdskjfas. they want to help! but they started to think about something else. and there they go. literally drifting off. not to sound like ingellvar or anything but absolutely adorable

[undead-knick-knack]

How 'bout a hand for the honeybees?

[puddinzducky]

hello... do u perchance have any bee swarm simulator stamps... or any food themed ones!!!!!

how abt.... BOTH !!

[jewish-culture-is]

Jewish culture is going to your grandparents' house for Chanukah and all the kids love fire so they each get their own menorah and everyone saying the prayers a little bit wrong and out of sync and then you put all the menorahs together on a cookie sheet in the kitchen and the combined heat of like 10 menorahs makes basically a bonfire and everyone's a little bit worried that the Hanukkah bonfire will burn down the house

.

[jesting-bug]

been playin alot of bee swarm simulator as of late! So durin a roadtrip I made this little doodle. You neighbors get art from an actually art program this time, enjoy!!

Transparent version below V

[adragonsoulants]

Guess what,

The bees swarmed again today

And of course I only found them incidentally while checking on my garden after a rain.

This was just one cluster and probably like half the size of the one from this spring. Real wild they were swarming, didn't think they did that this time of year, it's usually a late spring / fall thing.

They were probably about 112-15 feet up in the pine tree, we barely had the means to set up another hive box for them, just wooden hives left at this point and they're all pretty old and worn at this point.

We also had to use our tractor to lift the box up to them and then my mom just like scooped them in with her hand. I would have done this part but I'm allergic now and any risk of me getting stung we can remove we try to hah. But they were SUPER chill, even poking them directly they hardly reacted. I ended up poking them later lol.

It was a kinda funny ordeal.

For some reason they clustered on the back of the box by the lid, I was worried the queen was on the outside of the box there. I think that the lid just didn't fit well and there were gaps and that where the pheromones were strongest n what not.

Bees doing lil bee things

Might be hard to see but this was the branch that they were clustered on and we noticed this large part of the branch that just looked chewed up. Wonder if this is normal for clustering bees or if maybe that damaged part of the branch was why they were clustering there. 🤷

This species of honey bee is clearly doing well, two swarms (that we know of lol) this year after previous years of not even having a colony make the winter.

[one-time-i-dreamt]

I was making a sandwich but the lid to the peanut butter jar disappeared and I had to go through Roblox and I saw people illegally printing money in Bee Swarm Simulator. I never played Bee Swarm Simulator.

[razztazzel]

I can’t stop drawing the bees as these little critters release me…

[banzack]

various bee swarm stamps! i will do more bees if requested!

[m00ntunaart]

when I getchu’ cobb when I getchu’ cobb when I getchu’ cobb

(Basically a depiction of what my mind looks like when I’m working on my art)