Spring will be here before you know it. Here in Arizona, spring comes a bit earlier than in other parts of the country. That means bees are active here comparatively early as well. We expect to see bee swarms begin in the desert sometime in May.
While swarms are fairly common in desert cities like Scottsdale and Tempe, they aren’t as bad as you might think. Don’t believe Hollywood’s portrayal of swarming bees as killer insects just looking for blood. They are anything but.
Finding a New Home
Bee colonies need queens to survive. Thanks to the bee’s relatively short life cycle, colonies are regularly producing new queens. This is where swarming comes in. Swarming generally occurs when a new queen is born to a colony with a healthy queen already in place.
Swarming takes place in the spring for the simple fact that colonies tend to start growing once the weather warms up and food sources become more abundant. A growing colony running out of room will produce a second queen for the sole purpose of starting a new colony.
That queen leaves the nest and takes a certain number of worker bees with her. This is what causes the swarm. A swarm of bees is essentially a large group of workers who, along with their queen, are searching for someplace to establish a new home.
Swarms Naturally Disperse
We get the fact that people panic over bee swarms. Bees make a lot of people nervous. Still, there is no need to panic. Be swarms naturally disperse on their own in a relatively short amount of time. It’s a simple matter of waiting out the bees until they get sufficient rest to move on.
The best thing anyone can do in the midst of a swarm is to leave the bees alone. They will get their rest and continue on their way.
On the outside chance that bees on your Arizona property do become dangerous, don’t attempt to deal with them by yourself. Call Atomic Pest Control instead. We know how to address nuisance bees without unnecessarily destroying their nests.
