Swarm season in the spring of 2025 had difficult weather for conducting my research. Summer-like heat came early, advancing the bees and plants into growth too early. Then the cold returned. The low humidity and cloudless nights cratered the night-time temperatures. Brood chilled. Just as expected, the bees dragged out the dead, leaving some at the entrance, the most from new colonies (see Figure 1). The damage was more unusual. The tulip trees (that I watch almost daily) ended up with dead splotches on their leaves (see Figure 2).
I had moved 10 strong hives near to my apiary, ensuring that with the 22 other hives, plenty of natural swarms would be present for my research. As part of that research, I had bait hives stocked with combs ready for the swarms. As a swarm occupied one bait hive at a test site, I moved the pair of hives away and replaced them with an additional pair of bait hives for another repeat (replication) of the test (treatment). I was testing again whether the scout bees could determine the difference in the amount of comb between the bait hives. (More on that experiment in an upcoming article.)
While working in the home apiary by the bee house, I heard a hum becoming louder high up in the tree canopy, right over the hives. Some 40 feet up, a swarm was launching. In the dense tangle of branches, it was impossible to see the swarm up there, typical of an apiary surrounded by a crowd of tall trees. I did not need to see the swarm, as long as I could hear it. The other colonies were working on a fairly brisk nectar flow, emanating a uniform hum. The loud swarm was right over the hives …
