Rise in honey bee swarm sightings has UK beekeepers scrambling

The sight is one that beekeepers say is understandably intimidating to the ordinary person out for a stroll: a sliver of sky that suddenly darkens amid the collective roar of thousands of honeybees before clustering on branches or bushes.

In Britain, the behavior known as swarming usually takes place from May to July and is a natural process in which a honey bee colony splits in two and leaves with a queen bee in search of a new home. But the country is currently experiencing a higher number of sightings for this time of year, most likely thanks to unusually warm weather that followed a cold, wet spell.

As a result, beekeepers and pest controllers who catch the swarms are reporting a flurry of calls for their help, as members of the public see the clusters in backyards, in chimneys, and even on barriers along city streets.

“We’re fully booked for the next four weeks,” said Rob Davies, a pest controller in Shropshire, central England, who specializes in dismantling and rebuilding structures such as chimneys to save honeybees. people calling for help.

Some bee rescuers even have to order new equipment to keep up with demand.

While it is difficult to put an exact figure on the current level of swarming, the British Beekeepers Association, which has nearly 30,000 members, said many were seeing more swarms than usual. Traffic to the association’s swarm removal site is up 19 percent from around this time last year, said Ian Campbell, a spokesman.

“It’s their form of large-scale reproduction,” said Mr. Campbell on the honey bees. “But this year it seemed to come a little earlier. It seems to be taking effect.”

Francis Ratnieks, a professor of beekeeping at the University of Sussex, said a recent spell of sunny, drier days in Britain had created optimal conditions for honeybee colonies to split off.

“It probably means we’ll have half-decent weather for once,” he said.

Alan Deeley, a beekeeper in Warwickshire in England’s West Midlands, said previous months’ weather was also a likely factor. Honeybee populations were bolstered last year by a long, hot and dry summer, he said, and then a period of cold, wet spring weather that dragged on into April, leading many beekeepers to stop inspecting their hives as often for fear of exposing their bees . to the cold.

“They got trapped in the hive, and that’s a trigger for them to swarm,” Mr Deeley said of the bees.

He said he had received at least twice as many calls this year about swarming and that beekeepers can sometimes prevent a colony from swarming, including by increasing a hive’s capacity.

The bees have attracted a lot of attention.

In Lancaster, a city in the northwest of England, a swarm attracted attention last week when a breaking on a metal pole on a stretch of sidewalk outside the office of a real estate agency. (A commenter on a Facebook post pointing it out joked that they were just looking for a new home.)

On the Isle of Guernsey, a crown area bordering Britain in the English Channel, the swarms were so numerous that Debbie Cox, the secretary of the local beekeepers’ association, recently ran out of the usual equipment and resorted to using a cardboard box to pick up a melon-sized swarm that had nestled in an apple tree in the backyard.

“It’s almost like the bees all over the country have all decided this year that they’re all going to swarm,” she said, adding that the group had already received about 30 calls this season, compared to half a dozen last season.

While honeybees tend to be docile rather than aggressive when swarming, beekeepers say people should still keep their distance if they see a large cluster.

The insects are pollinators that play a vital role for biodiversity and agriculture, and concerns about the decline of honey bee populations have arisen over the past decade due to the effects of pesticides and destructive mites, along with factors such as fungi and viruses. Other bee species, including bumblebees, have also faced ecological threats.

But the number of honey bee colonies managed globally has increased over the past 50 years, according to one longitudinal study published in the journal Nature last year, and beekeeping has boomed as a hobby in many places. Some beekeepers in Britain speculated that an increase in hobby beekeepers was a factor in the recent increase in swarms.

And since this is the start of the usual honeybee swarming season, Professor Ratnieks said if there was a surge, it wasn’t cause for concern. “It’s just part of spring,” he said, “as birds build their nests.”

“If there are a lot of swarms, it really means the bees are doing well,” he added.