Flight Swarm
Lexikon
With the flight swarm, the beekeeper makes use of the homing behavior of foraging bees to form a new colony.
With the flight swarm, the beekeeper makes use of the homing behavior of foraging bees to form a new colony. To do this, the original colony is moved to a different spot in spring, while at the old location a new hive is set up with a food comb, a brood comb, and wax foundation. The returning foraging bees, which still remember the old spot, gather there on their own and, together with the brood provided, form the new colony.
Since the flight swarm initially has no queen, it raises one for itself from the young, open brood available. After typically around sixteen days, the first queen hatches and kills her still-unhatched rivals. Alternatively, the flight swarm can immediately be given a foreign queen or a queen cell close to hatching, which makes it able to develop much faster.
In practice, the flight swarm is well suited to increasing colony numbers using material already on hand, since no additional bee material is needed from outside and the foraging bees would return to the old location anyway. A day with lively bee flight activity is important, so that as many foraging bees as possible actually find their way to the new box at the old spot.
A common misunderstanding is equating the flight swarm and the brushed swarm. While with the flight swarm the bees find their own way into the new home through their location memory, with the brushed swarm they are actively brushed off the combs. Both methods are often combined in practice, but they follow different biological principles.