Just a few days after I penned the last entry, I went down one afternoon to see a cloud of bees in front of the hive. A cloud, in this case, means an area roughly four feet wide that was filled with bees zipping back and forth. I was not surprised.
The dying colony had many frames of capped honey in the honey arches, which are the tips and sides of brood frames, and I had fully expected one of the neighboring hives to attack and plunder my hive for what little remained. In this case though, I rapidly realized that these bees were not fighting. Fighting bees drop to the ground, wrestling with each other. These were landing and crawling into the hive. A heap of dead bees was growing on the outside of the landing board as workers pulled them out, and I could see pollen laden workers landing amidst the frenzy.
Bees eat pollen. They do not, as my daughter's book on insects says, produce honey from it. The normal reason for gathering pollen is that there is a queen present, and she is laying eggs (the brood must be fed pollen). My colony had grown listless, with no queen to unite them, and would certainly not be gathering food.
These bees were colored differently, markedly so, with dark black abdomens, with minor light bands, matching neither my original queen or the failed supercedure queen. An hour or so later the hive was quiet. I approached it from the side, and gave it a solid whack. An alarmed buzz like a distant saw rose from the hive, and a few workers swirled out and around my legs. A wide grin split my face as I realized what had happened, and I walked back to the house with my airborne escorts following until they peeled off to return to the hive.
When a swarm leaves a colony, it is looking for a home. Usually, they are looking for a nice, empty home. On occasion, however, a swarm will decide that the resources of a depleted colony (mainly the drawn comb) are worth a fight. In my case, I'm not even certain my bees fought at all - they were all nearly six weeks old, essentially ancient, and might have died just before the swarm arrived.
October is not normally a swarm season, however, as I mentioned before, the bees do not actually have a calendar in the hive. There is no sign to tell them when to swarm and when not. They do so when congestion in the brood nest (or other factors) drive them to it. In the fall, it is not uncommon to feed a colony heavily to increase its odds of surviving. I know there are three beekeepers within a ten mile radius, one a few blocks away. Odds are that one of them has been feeding their colonies, and that colony had been growing. Growing rapidly, growing beyond where they "fit", and setting off an instinct to swarm. My near empty hive, with fresh drawn comb, empty supers, and pollen/honey arches must have looked quite inviting. I am a beekeeper again.
Now I rush to prepare for something that cannot be prepared for. I have the feeder back on the hive. I'm adding pollen substitute (yeast & soy flour + dried milk) to stimulate population growth. I've heard it quoted that fifty percent of all swarms fail. Those are swarms in the summer, with time to build up, time to prepare. I want to provide what they need to survive the winter, to fill up their stores and stimulate additional brood, to keep them warm and the wasps and mice out, but I must face a simple fact: I am not a bee.
The things essential to survival cannot be done for them. I can provide the raw materials, the environment, the opportunities.
Their survival and success is up to them. As in all of life.
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