# One Massive Swarm, Over 20 Queens!



## Girl Next Door Honey (Jan 4, 2016)

Hey beeks,

This week I encountered an incredible situation near one of my apiaries: A huge swarm with over 20 queens in it! I was able to count the queens because the swarm was full of small, tight, furious clusters that kept falling from the main swarm mass onto the ground. I have never seen bees ball out a queen, but I was pretty sure this is what these clusters were so I dug around in several of them until I found a queen which was quickly overtaken again by the murderous bees. I actually picked these up with my bare hands. It was amazing to see and feel. It was very hot and the bees were packed incredibly tight at the center, it was a challenge to uncover the queen inside. So, I collected about 20 of these balls. Here is a link to a video I took of it: https://www.instagram.com/p/BIvfTzDjYmQ/?taken-by=girlnextdoorhoney

Meanwhile the swarm was being incredibly indecisive. First landing on a bush, then flying off, then coming back, entering my box, leaving my box. At one point a huge cloud of them followed me to my car (about 60 ft from the original swarm location) while I was grabbing additional equipment and then seemed to fly back with me to the original spot. I believe several smaller swarms broke off and went into a neighboring park, but this did not seem to reduce the size of the main swarm by much. It was still gigantic. These photos can't even do it justice. They finally settled in a small tree that was in a more open area and I was able to set up two mediums stacked on top of each other next to the trunk with some swarm commander in it. They began running down the trunk to get in the box and then swarmed out and came back and landed in the box. I have seen bees do this several times when catching swarms in the past. When they decide they like your box some seem to go in and then they all fly out together and land together en masse. I assume it's a way of getting organized. I have not been back yet to see if they stayed in my box, but the whole experience was incredible. 

I wanted to share and ask others if they have seen anything like this before? What is the most queens you have seen in one swarm? Have you ever seen a swarm ball out queens like this? Do you have any theories about what I saw?

In regards to where the swarm came from. I inspected my two biggest hives in the apiary and neither showed evidence of swarming (aka no swarm cells). All the other hives are pretty modest in size and I can't imagine they could produce a swarm like this. So where this massive swarm came from I have now idea, but it felt like a gift. This all happened on a special day: it was the last day of beekeeping fun with a good friend who is moving to the east coast. She has been helping me with my hives and learning from me almost full time for the past year and both of us were very sad to say goodbye to each other. It felt like the bees gave her their own crazy send off!


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## cervus (May 8, 2016)

Wow! That's all I got. Wow!


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## GaryG74 (Apr 9, 2014)

Incredible! Thanks for sharing the great photos. Hope they stayed in your hive.


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## Nordak (Jun 17, 2016)

That is truly awesome. Thanks for sharing.


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## Clairesmom (Jun 6, 2012)

Wow!!!

I have never seen anything like that. Have never heard of it, either. In fact, I have never even heard of a swarm with more than one queen.

Will be interesting to see what others add to this thread, based on their own experiences.

Wow!!!!


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## Girl Next Door Honey (Jan 4, 2016)

I have read about a swarm having 2-3 queens, but I had no idea 20 was a possibility! Bees do the darndest things!


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

My only question is what are you going to do with these excess queens?
I wonder if the balling had killed them already.


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## heaflaw (Feb 26, 2007)

Yeah, I'd try to cage as many as possible and then make splits from the swarm. Is it possible they could kill ALL the queens in the frenzy.


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## cervus (May 8, 2016)

beepro said:


> My only question is what are you going to do with these excess queens?


Swarm Lure? Like she really needs it with her luck!


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## Girl Next Door Honey (Jan 4, 2016)

beepro said:


> My only question is what are you going to do with these excess queens?
> I wonder if the balling had killed them already.


We tried a few times to break out a queen, but the bees were very determined to kill them and would quickly overtake them again or the queens would fly off. Even if we had succeeded and got one in a queen cage... I have too many colonies as it is (90) and since I do so many bee removals I can actually run out of apiary space. Also the bees are of unknown origin and they may be Africanized. I won't know until they've settled and started building comb. It can take 3 weeks for them to get defensive. I didn't want to spread these queens all over and then find out they that they are super Africanized.


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## marshmasterpat (Jun 26, 2013)

That was an awesome video and pictures as so cool. Many thanks for sharing :thumbsup:x2


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## Lburou (May 13, 2012)

I have seen swarms with several queens, and each queen sequestered in a ball while one queen was laying. I think they were proving the laying queen before killing the extra queens. They also could issue afterswarms with those queens. 20 queens in a swarm must be right up there in the record books. That was a really good sized swarm.


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## Girl Next Door Honey (Jan 4, 2016)

Lburou said:


> I have seen swarms with several queens, and each queen sequestered in a ball while one queen was laying. I think they were proving the laying queen before killing the extra queens. They also could issue afterswarms with those queens. 20 queens in a swarm must be right up there in the record books. That was a really good sized swarm.


Question... if it is a swarm and there's no comb, how can they prove a laying queen? Several people on Facebook told me about how bees will sequester virgins to protect them rather than kill them, but I don't think that is what was happening here. The seemed really violent towards the queens. 

Today I went back to the site to see what was going on. Before I left them on Thursday when all this went on, it was sundown and the bees were still busy clustering around all these queens. Many of the balls fell out of the swarm mass onto the ground. I had collected these and put all the little "murder balls" on one board right next to the box I finally got the swarm to move into. When I went back today, the board had some dead workers and I found amongst them 9 dead queens. The box that the swarm went into was empty. I found the swarm back where I had found them originally, about 15 ft away in a bramble of dead bushes. They were much smaller. A few minutes after I found them they swarmed up into the air again, then went back into the bramble. There was small ball separated out from the main group of bees and it was about the size of the balls I had seen earlier, but it was not as compact or crazy. The bees were clustering around a queen, but they seemed to be protecting her rather than balling her. I uncovered her easily and she did not seem distressed. I put them in a nuc and rallied some more bees to join them. I got the other half of the swarm in another nuc. Who knows if they will stay in either, but this experience today has me convinced that what I saw on Thursday was indeed the balling of queens and not the protection of queens. One can always be wrong though... especially with bees!


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## Lburou (May 13, 2012)

Girl Next Door Honey said:


> Question... if it is a swarm and there's no comb, how can they prove a laying queen?...


Bees can have comb enough to lay in twenty four hours. The instance I referred to was the usurpation of a queenless mating NUC, so there was comb available. Three days after the queen started laying, I found three balls of bees with live queens. A queen is vulnerable to heat. It would take only minutes for a ball of bees to overheat and kill a queen. The fact that the three balls of bees contained live queens, suggests that, in this case anyway, they were holding the queens for some purpose.

Keep an eye on your new bees and let us know what happens. Your results may vary.


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## Girl Next Door Honey (Jan 4, 2016)

Lburou said:


> I found three balls of bees with live queens.


Do you remember what they were they like? Were they like what I described seeing? Were they loose or were they tightly packed? Did you hear them making the noise that sounded like power lines heard in my video?

This swarm had no comb. I have not been able to find anything on how long it takes bees to ball out a queen. If you are correct and it only takes minutes then maybe that was not what this swarm was doing because I found live queens in some of the balls that had been at it for an hour.


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## Lburou (May 13, 2012)

Girl Next Door Honey said:


> Do you remember what they were they like? Were they like what I described seeing? Were they loose or were they tightly packed? Did you hear them making the noise that sounded like power lines heard in my video?...


The balls of bees around the queens I mentioned were about the size of a golf ball and fairly tightly packed, but I could get rough with them and get to the queen. I'm hearing impaired (presbycusis), and didn't hear anything. I am sure of one thing. There is a wide range of behaviours in honey bees and that some their purposes overlap other purposes as we watch their behaviours. Sorting things out isn't always black and white.


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## marshmasterpat (Jun 26, 2013)

Girl NDH - This is just so cool, thanks for sharing

Lburou - Thanks to for sharing. Good information from both of you.


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## DavidZ (Apr 9, 2016)

lol...facebook is the last place you want to go for answers...I mean there's a few real beeks there, and they rarely ever answer, the rest are trolls with no working knowledge, all book learning/reading which shows their elementary cut/paste bs at best.
lots and lots of pure mis information, and hundreds of ruined hives this year from the bad info passed on those FB forums.
I read over there and I'm not impressed with what's being passed as info.

the best info is here on beesource..mwo


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## Girl Next Door Honey (Jan 4, 2016)

DavidZ said:


> lol...facebook is the last place you want to go for answers...


Yeah, just to be clear, I wasn't there looking for answers lol I came here for that. I was just sharing the story and people were putting in their two cents.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

At 150F inside the ball suffocating her, the intruder will die with a minute or 2.
My timing was around 5 minutes max to kill a balled queen. So I would
say around 3-5 minutes time frame. Though there are exception when some queens
are stronger than the other. The biting to disabled her hind leg first, her weakest spot, will
get to her early on.


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## Cadence (Mar 31, 2014)

Thanks to your effort to video and photo this event, many of us will learn from your experience. This is such a valuable teaching resource. Thank your for posting your video and details of the encounter!!!!


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## Clairesmom (Jun 6, 2012)

Okay, I need some Beekeeping 101 here.

Why would the bees swarm with all of those queens, then kill them?


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

Cool. Thanks for sharing.

I've always figured the multiple queens were accidental as Huber also assumed:

"On the twelfth, the queen was at last liberated, as we found her in the hive, She had been treated exactly as her predecessor, the bees allowed her to rest in quiet, when distant from the royal cells, but tormented her cruelly when she approached them. We watched this queen a long time, but not aware that she would lead out a colony, we left the hive for a few hours. Returning at mid-day, we were greatly surprised to find it almost totally deserted. During our absence, it had thrown a prodigious swarm, which still clustered on the branch of a neighbouring tree. We also saw with astonishment the third cell open, and its top connected to it as by a hinge. In all probability, the captive queen, profiting by the confusion that preceded the swarming, escaped. Thus, there was no doubt of both queens being in the swarm. We found it so and removed them, that the bees might return to the hive, which they did very soon."--Francis Huber, New Observations on the Natural History Of Bees, Volume I, Letter IX

With 20 queens, I think another swarm phenomena has also taken place. I have often seen multiple swarms shifting back and forth in size, i.e. one swarm grows while the other shrinks and sometimes they end up merging into one. I would guess you have multiple swarms that eventually merged into one, each original having multiple queens. I've just never seen 20 identical aged queen cells in a swarming colony. They often have 20 cells or more, but those are staggered in age...


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## Girl Next Door Honey (Jan 4, 2016)

beepro said:


> At 150F inside the ball suffocating her, the intruder will die with a minute or 2.
> My timing was around 5 minutes max to kill a balled queen. So I would
> say around 3-5 minutes time frame. Though there are exception when some queens
> are stronger than the other. The biting to disabled her hind leg first, her weakest spot, will
> get to her early on.


Are you saying you were able to time it yourself or are you just speculating?


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## Girl Next Door Honey (Jan 4, 2016)

Michael Bush said:


> I've just never seen 20 identical aged queen cells in a swarming colony. They often have 20 cells or more, but those are staggered in age...


I think it's an Africanized thing. I've seen them do it in a swarming colony and also when making emergency queen cells. 

Given the hugeness of the swarm, I am liking your theory about multiple swarms combining together. 

What I am wondering now, is there any doubt that these bees were trying to ball out the queens? Could they have been protecting them instead? I mentioned before that we observed live queens in these clusters for over an hour. Some are saying they could kill her much quicker. My gut is telling me they were killing those queens though. It just seemed to violent to be a protective cluster.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>What I am wondering now, is there any doubt that these bees were trying to ball out the queens? Could they have been protecting them instead?

In my experience, it always looks aggressive when I see queens being balled. Some people say they are protecting the queens. Perhaps, they are sometimes, but usually it does not appear that way to me. Huber insists they never kill the queen, but I think I've seen it end that way. Huber insists they are merely trying to confine the queen, which is somewhat aggressive...

"In the next place, we introduced a very fertile queen into this hive; after painting the thorax to distinguish her from the reigning queen. A circle of bees quickly formed around the stranger, but their intention was not to caress and receive her well; for they insensibly accumulated so much, and surrounded her so closely, that in scarcely a minute she lost her liberty and became a prisoner. It is a remarkable circumstance, that other workers at the same time collected round the reigning queen and restrained all her motions; we instantly saw her confined like the stranger. Perhaps it may be said, the bees anticipated the combat in which these queens were about to engage, and were impatient to behold the issue of it, for they retained their prisoners only when they appeared to withdraw from each other; and if one less restrained seemed desirous of approaching her rival, all the bees forming the clusters gave way to allow her full liberty for the attack; then if the queens testified a disposition to fly, they returned to enclose them.

"We have repeatedly witnessed this fact, but it presents so new and singular a characteristic in the policy of bees, that it must be seen again a thousand times before any positive assertion can be made on the subject. I would therefore recommend that Naturalists should attentively examine the combat of queens, and particularly ascertain what part is taken by the workers. Is their object to accelerate the combat? Do they by any secret means excite the fury of the combatants? Whence does it happen that accustomed to bestow every care on their queen, in certain circumstances, they oppose her preparations to avoid, impending danger?"--François Huber, New Observations on the Natural History Of Bees Volume I, Letter VI

Another of Huber's description of balling a queen:

"I cannot doubt that the agitation arises from the workers having lost their queen; for on restoring her, tranquility is instantly among them; and, what is very singular, they recognize her: you must interpret this expression strictly. Substitution of another queen is not attended with the same effect, if she is introduced into the hive within the first twelve hours after removal of the reigning one. Here the agitation continues; and the bees treat the stranger the same as when the preference of their own leaves them nothing to desire. They surround, seize, and keep her captive, a very long time, in an impenetrable cluster; and she commonly dies either from hunger or privation of air."--François Huber, New Observations on the Natural History Of Bees Volume I, Letter VI


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

I raised my own queens for the last 4 years of beekeeping after
watching Mike Palmer's you tube vid on "the sustainable apiary" is possible.
Over the years I have made many mistakes to kill the queens. Many got balled to
death for not knowing why before. Now I know. When the foreign queen got dropped into
the adjacent hive on a hive check then she got balled. Once that happened the bees will marked her
as the target for death with the bee scent. Her own bees will see her as an intruder having the smells of
the bees that marked her. The foreign bees see her as an intruder and will not accept her for sure. It ends up
both sides cannot take her. Even when you can separate her from the balling she cannot make it alone. One 
possible solution that I have came up is to use the newly emerged innocent looking bees that will take care of her. 
They don't recognize the bee scent yet and will accept the queen on first sight. This require lots of works to keep on
queen alive after being balled. Done that before.
On some balled queens I just leave it there knowing that she will be rejected on both sides. Sometimes I will time
this process while watching them. Sometimes I just covered the hive up pretending that nothing had happen.
The sight is not for the faint of heart. My only explanation is 20 queens got balled because they all got marked by
the bees sentencing them to death. Because they got to the same location at the wrong time of swarming. If they all
go separate ways then everything is fine with smaller swarm.


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## ChuckReburn (Dec 17, 2013)

We caught a large swarm this year with 3 mated queens and (likely) 1 virgin. Flow had been delayed and then was a lot better than anticipated when we got a call from an outyard where the landowner saw swarms emerging from 2 hives at the same time, these had combined into 1 very large swarm by the time we got there. At home we dumped them into a 4 ft top bar that immediately cast off 2 swarms which we hived separately. Those 2 swarms had laying queens and the top bar remained with 2 large clusters at opposite ends. One cluster on the donor comb with a laying queen and the other drawing 5 or 6 frames out and filling them with honey, never could find a queen in the second cluster so I combined them and let the bees sort it out.


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## Girl Next Door Honey (Jan 4, 2016)

beepro said:


> Once that happened the bees will marked her
> as the target for death with the bee scent.


I had a feeling they did that so I didn't really bother trying to save the queens. Although, once I rescued a queen from a balling situation, caged her and put her in another hive where she was accepted. It was a queen I had bought.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Dups!


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

That is an exception then. Sometimes I can save some by pouring honey all over
them but some still died in the end. The bee world is a bit complicated for me to understand them all.


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