Honestly, I’m on Team Honey, but that argument has a glaring hole in it.
Which is that many apiaries put an object over the entrance to the hive which lets worker bees pass freely but blocks the queen from escaping. And worker bees bonded to a queen will literally die before abandoning her.
So they can’t just leave. Bees that do that in the while travel as a colony in what’s called a swarm (which is actually very docile because they have no hive to defend). A bee that gets separated from its colony dies.
I’m not an expert by any means, but I have known some beekeepers. Once I was asked to go help because one of their hives had “swarmed”, meaning a group had left the box with the/a queen and had posted up on a neighbors rose bush.
Some areas have a “swam list,” where beekeepers put their name on the list and whenever someone in the area finds a swarm on their property they call someone from the swarm list and they come out to get the bees.
It’s a lot better than the alternative, which is ignorant property owners spraying the swarm with wasp poison… :(
Honestly, I’m on Team Honey, but that argument has a glaring hole in it.
Which is that many apiaries put an object over the entrance to the hive which lets worker bees pass freely but blocks the queen from escaping. And worker bees bonded to a queen will literally die before abandoning her.
So they can’t just leave. Bees that do that in the while travel as a colony in what’s called a swarm (which is actually very docile because they have no hive to defend). A bee that gets separated from its colony dies.
I’m not an expert by any means, but I have known some beekeepers. Once I was asked to go help because one of their hives had “swarmed”, meaning a group had left the box with the/a queen and had posted up on a neighbors rose bush.
Some areas have a “swam list,” where beekeepers put their name on the list and whenever someone in the area finds a swarm on their property they call someone from the swarm list and they come out to get the bees.
It’s a lot better than the alternative, which is ignorant property owners spraying the swarm with wasp poison… :(