The spring arrives in California in early February while it may be later in the northern states. The object of inspecting your hive or hives is to gain information about the hive and the bees that dwell within. You are checking the hive for evidence of a laying queen, supply of honey and pollen being stored. If the hive is healthy, you should find an abundance of natural pollen and honey – as this is a period of increased colony growth. There should be 4 or 5 frames of brood in all stages from eggs, larvae and pupae with the queen’s laying pattern solid ( no missing cells ) there could be a problem if not all cell are filled or a spotty looking pattern.

Spring is when the hive rapidly builds-up and run out of room in the hive, thus starts a natural reproduction of rearing a queen cell or cells and start the Swarming Process.

Swarming is generally linked to the hive congestion and you do not want your hive to swarm. The swarming process involved the older queen stop laying eggs 3 days before she leaves the hive ( this allows her to lose body weight so she can fly ) and she will leave the hive before the new queen emerges from her queen cell thus taking from 50% to 80%
of bees in the hive with her to make a new home. The virgin queen hatches from her queen cell and is has a hive with pollen, honey and bees to provide support but it is up to her to made her mating flight and get back to the hive to start the new year of egg laying.

The Swarming Process is not to be confused with the Supersedure of a hive. The Supersedure is the replacement of a failing queen or a queen that is undesirable to the bees in the hive. In this action by the bees in the hive are creating a new queen and killing the existing queen.

There are several ways to avoid the Swarming Process – Dividing the hive ( split ) is the method most commercial as well as hobbiest use. This method involves taking out honey, brood with bees on it and placing it into an empty hive body. A virgin or bred queen can be bought and place in your new hive but there is a window of time to do this so it can have success – now you have two hive from one without losing any bees.