Mar 2, 2012 – Anxious For Spring
QUESTION:
Why would honey bees swarm inside a school in February in Georgia?
ANSWER:
This has been, perhaps, an oddball weather year in many areas of the U.S. In California we have had very, very little rain and spring-like weather in January. This last weekend it went over 70 degrees, which triggers a lot of insects to emerge from winter dormancy. We have seen the spring butterflies already out, and every tree that will blossom seems to be doing it already. Since honeybees do not die off in the winter their colonies continue to be active, even though the foraging bees themselves may not emerge from their hives. I believe I once read that the minimum air temperature needs to be about 58 degrees Fahrenheit for honeybees to be active and foraging, so if you have also been having springtime weather that is warm this could be the stimulus that is bringing the bees out.
View past Ask Mr. Pest Control questions.
Why would honey bees swarm inside a school in February in Georgia?
ANSWER:
This has been, perhaps, an oddball weather year in many areas of the U.S. In California we have had very, very little rain and spring-like weather in January. This last weekend it went over 70 degrees, which triggers a lot of insects to emerge from winter dormancy. We have seen the spring butterflies already out, and every tree that will blossom seems to be doing it already. Since honeybees do not die off in the winter their colonies continue to be active, even though the foraging bees themselves may not emerge from their hives. I believe I once read that the minimum air temperature needs to be about 58 degrees Fahrenheit for honeybees to be active and foraging, so if you have also been having springtime weather that is warm this could be the stimulus that is bringing the bees out.
Now, there are swarms outdoors, where a new Queen leaves an established colony to fly to someplace else to start a new colony, taking a large number of workers with her. These are the swarms that end up lingering on fences and tree limbs for a few days and then moving on. A "swarm" on the inside of a structure sounds to me more like a problem where a honeybee colony has been living in the walls or some other void in that school building and warm weather triggered the workers to start moving around. They then could have found their way down into the rooms below or nearby rather than going to the outside. Do you think this may be the case? If these are just a lot of bees flying around in there rather than some concentration of them in one location it suggests this confusion rather than the possibility that a moving queen ended up inside.
If we accept that the bees may have come from some established hive within this structure then a very careful inspection needs to be done to determine exactly where that hive is located. The bees and the hive need to be extracted from the building or it could put children at risk. Having stinging social bees this close to human activity is not a good thing, and having a hive full of honey inside a wall is asking for troubles as well. Whether the school administration likes it or not, if the hive is determined to be within a hidden void, such as a wall void, that void needs to be physically opened once the bees are killed or removed, and the hive and honey need to be removed and the surfaces there cleaned thoroughly. You also need to determine where on the outside the bees were entering and permanently close off the opening(s).
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