In fact, the bee family is able to live forever. Some bees die, new ones are born to replace them, the same applies to queens and drones. But how do bee colonies breed? The answer is simple: swarms.
A bee swarm is a group of bees with a fetal or still infertile uterus and drones. In fact, this is already a small bee family.
There can be many reasons for swarming: tightness, stuffiness, lack of a bribe in nature during the bribe period. But the first reason is the desire for reproduction.
When can a swarm fly out?
Typically, a swarm leaves its family in May or June, rarely in July and August.
This is due to the fact that the swarm must have time to find a new home, provide itself with enough honey to be enough for the whole winter and raise the necessary number of young wintering bees.
The swarms flown out, for example, in August, may simply not have time to do this, they will be doomed to death.
First swarm (beekeepers call it - pervak) always comes out with an old fetal uterus. In order for the uterus to be ready for flight, it needs to lose weight, so the family should prepare in advance for swarming.
Bees begin to feed the uterus less, lay swarm mother liquors and when the first of them is sealed, and this happens on day 9, the swarm leaves the family.
The family does not leave all the bees, but about 1/3 of the total.
These are young bees who did not take part in the work, they needed to save the energy of their body in order to create a new home. A swarm can settle anywhere: in a crevice of a rock, a hole or in an old hollow.
Meanwhile, in the family that released the swarm, there remains a large number of broods, these are future young bees, as well as queen cells.
There are many mothers left from 15 to 50, sometimes more. Maturation of the uterus in the mother liquor occurs in 16 days.
How many swarms can fly out of one hive?
If the beekeeper did not take measures after the release of the first swarm, did not destroy all the mother cells, leaving only one, the family will release a second swarm.
Beekeepers call him a secondhand. It may be followed by a third and so on until eight. This is called a family erupted.
All subsequent swarms after the first are much weaker. If the family released five swarms, it is not a fact that all of them will find a new home and survive. But if at least only 2 of them can do this, family reproduction can be considered successful.
About queen cells that remain
And, if there are as many as 50 mother cells, and there can be a maximum of eight swarms, then where do the other uterus go?
We know that the queen bee is always alone. The strongest simply kills others!
The speed of laying the queen cells was different, therefore, the uterus comes out at different times. The first popped uterus seeks to kill its sisters. She searches for mother liquors, nibbles them on the side, and with her sting kills her sister.
What a horror, You will rightly think. But the bees and the uterus do not think, they do not have brains, and accordingly the feelings inherent in man, that is, they live by reflexes. And the reflex (voice in the head, if you will) makes them do it.
