Preparation for swarming starts with the building of swarm cups. These are short bowl-shaped cells with their openings facing downwards. These swarm cups are usually found at the bottom edge of the comb, but also at the front and back edges of the comb. The queen lays eggs in a number of these swarm cups. After the eggs hatch, nurse bees deposit food in these cups, and from this moment on the cups are elongated to become swarm queen cells. Much more brood food is deposited in a queen cell than in a worker cell, and the composition of the food is also different: the queen’s food is called royal jelly. The reason why this fertilised egg produces a queen and not a worker is apparently the result of both the amount and composition of the food offered to the larva. From the moment the queen has laid eggs in the first swarm cup the workers offer less food to the queen. The behaviour of the workers towards the queen alters radically as soon as the first swarm cells have been capped. The old queen is forced to leave the hive and a part of the colony leaves with her. At the moment of swarming thousands of bees will circle in the air. A swarm usually looks for a resting place in the neighbourhood of the hive. From there scout bees start looking for a nesting place. If the scout bees do not find a suitable nesting place, the swarm leaves. Swarms with a young queen often travel long distances. About a week after the departure of the first swarm with the old queen, the first young queen emerges. The first young queen to emerge on the comb produces a piping sound. The young queens that have not yet emerged respond to this with a lower note. If you tap the hive and put your ear to the wall of the hive you can hear these sounds. You will then know that there are young queens present. Three situations can now arise: 1 The first young queen leaves with part of the colony. If another queen should emerge at the same time, she may fly out with the same swarm. This swarm may be divided afterwards. You can see this happening when the swarm chooses a resting place. The bees
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Beekeeping in the tropics