There are different ways for a bee keeper to look at swarming. On the one hand, a swarm means an additional hive, additional honey but only in the long run (probably not til the next year), and perhaps a little adventure in retrieving it. However, on the more practical side, swarm prevention is preferred by any bee keeper who is wanting to keep his hive population and his honey production high.
If a hive swarms, you've just lost half your honey producing bees from the original hive and they have to have time to build themselves back up so that they can get that original level of production up as well.
If you catch the swarm and place them in a hive box that already has drawn out comb in it, you still have to wait on the queen to lay eggs that will take 21-24 days to be born. A large portion of the bees will be dying off and the population will be dwindling as a bee typically lives about 30 days or so. The survival of the new hive will greatly depend on the older bees surving til the new bees are born.
One way to give a tremendous boost to bee production in the new hive is to remove a couple of brood frames from another hive, they don't necessarily have to come from the original hive, you may not even know which one the swarm came from. The baby bees will not go back to the hive that their brood frame was removed from. When they are born, they will only know the pheromone of that hive's queen and believe that is where they are supposed to be.
Since a swarm leaves home with only the food they can carry inside them, they will need food stores quickly. Adding a food source will also be very beneficial to the ladies. Pollen patties are a great source of protein for the bees, but if you don't have any ready available (you can order it from a bee supplier), give them sugar water or even honey.
Our next post will be about Swarm Prevention.
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