I have bees in my tree, what do I do?

Discovering a swarm of bees in a tree is quite common in Phoenix Arizona.

Bees love to land in trees, it’s one of their favorite places and usually up high enough to keep them out of danger. There’s plenty of shade so it makes a great resting place for them as they are traveling to locate a nesting place for them to build a beehive.

Often if bees don’t have enough shade while they’re sitting in a tree they can move on to find a better suitable location for them to rest or to build a beehive. They can just as well build honeycomb and establish a beehive on a tree branch, so hoping that the bees will leave and find another place is kind of a waiting game and often they just stay right there. They also like to relocate really close to where they are resting such at up in the attic. Another favorite place for bees to build a hive inside of a tree. 

Where does the bee Swarm come from?

A swarm of bees comes from a bee colony that is very well-established and overpopulated, usually crowded for room and usually no other places to store honey. When a beehive colony becomes cramped for room and overpopulated they usually want to swarm that means about half of the bees will leave the beehive with the queen and start a new Hive elsewhere.

What happens to the queen?

Before the bees swarm the bees will make Queen cells for the queen to lay an eggs in. The queen will lay an egg in the queen cells and the bees will add royal jelly to the cells. After the larva hatches out and grows bigger the bees keep feeding the larvae royal jelly. When the larvae gets big enough the bees cap over the queen cell to encapsulate the larvae in the queen cell this is the start of the metamorphose process. The tiny larvae starts going through metamorphosis and turns into a queen there will be several Queens hatching out and whichever one is the strongest takes over they actually fight till the death. The queen that hatches out first Sometimes will tear up the queen cell and sting the queen going through metamorphosis or if there’s two queens that hatch out about the same time they fight and whichever one wins Takes Over The Hive. From the time the queen lays the egg until the queen hatches out it’s about 21 days.