When a colony swarms it may do so more than once. After all, you know that swarms leave the hive with a queen… Right? And when they do, most of us want to catch those bees and relocate them in a nice cosy new beehive.īut sometimes you can catch a swarm and it appears to be queenless. ![]() And you can quite simply lose the larger part of your colony. Swarming breaks the brood cycle and on a whole reduces productivity. ![]() So what are the circumstances where you might come across a swarm without a queen? Queenless Swarms But on very rare occasions it is possible to come across a queenless swarm, or what appears to be a swarm without a queen. Will bees swarm without a queen? The short answer is no, a swarm contains thousands or even tens of thousands of worker bees and one queen. To be honest, I didn’t think this was possible. So the queen decides to find less cramped living conditions and absconds with half of the colony! But recently I heard about a beekeeper who discovered a queenless swarm. So much so that bees start to have difficulty understanding whether or not there’s a healthy laying queen in the hive. If the season is good and a beehive’s population has grown, a single colony can become overcrowded. Swarms are natures way for honey bees to reproduce and expand.
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