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Swarming is a honey bee colony's natural means of reproduction.In the process of swarming, a single colony splits into two or more distinct colonies. [1]Swarming is mainly a spring phenomenon, usually within a two- or three-week period depending on the locale, but occasional swarms can happen throughout the producing season.
Once the first brood has emerged, the colony enters the worker phase. In this phase, queens will stop foraging and stay in the nest. The workers put pollen and nectar into the cells of the nest where the queen can lay her eggs. This phase can last for one to three broods depending on the length of the season.
While some colonies live in hives provided by humans, so-called "wild" colonies (although all honey bees remain wild, even when cultivated and managed by humans) typically prefer a nest site that is clean, dry, protected from the weather, about 20 litres (4.4 imp gal; 5.3 US gal) in volume with a 4–6 cm 2 (0.62–0.93 sq in) entrance about 3 ...
Brood frames usually have some pollen and nectar or honey in the upper corners of the frame. The rest of the brood frame cells may be empty or occupied by brood in various developmental stages. During the brood raising season, the bees may reuse the cells from which brood has emerged for additional brood or convert it to honey or pollen storage.
Once the brood is provisioned, the queen seals the nest synchronously with all other queens in the aggregation, and all above-ground activity ceases for three weeks. [9] Larvae from the earliest eggs are full grown and start pupation by the end of May in Central Europe (or much earlier in warmer climates), emerging from their cells by mid-June ...
All brood rearing stops for some period during the winter. In early spring, brood rearing resumes inside the winter cluster when the queen starts to lay eggs again. Once a brood nest is established, the cluster must maintain a steady temperature between 34.5 and 36.7 °C (94.1 and 98.1 °F) inside the cluster.
The queen usually nurses the first brood alone. After the first workers appear, the queen's role in the colony typically becomes one of exclusive (and generally continuous) egg-laying. For an example of a colony founding process, see Atta sexdens. Flying Ant from Calgary, Alberta Canada Aug 2018. The young queens have an extremely high failure ...
The bee colony's first activity of swarm preparation is to reduce the brood volume by creating additional stores inside the brood area. As brood emerges, selected cells are back-filled with honey, nectar, or pollen. Later into the season, as space for egg laying decreases the queen will not be able to lay as many eggs.