ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE

Attraction and direct establishment of primary

and secondary honey bee swarms using
swarm-tissue sachets

Alexandros Papachristoforou
1*
and Konstantinos Ilanidis
1


1
Laboratory of Animal Physiology, School of Biology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece.

Received 19 September 2011, accepted subject to revision 2 May 2012, accepted for publication 19 December 2012.

*Corresponding author: Email: alpapach@bio.auth.gr


Summary
In an effort to attract swarms within an apiary and to induce their direct establishment in hive-traps, we investigated the use of a new honey
bee swarm attractant in the form of a small sachet containing a wet-wipe tissue, including geranic acid, citral, geraniol and rose oil as
attractants. When swarm-tissues sachets were placed in hive traps at a distance of either 5 or 30m from the colonies, 60% of the swarms
were established directly and permanently inside hive traps. All established swarms were secondary, headed by virgin queen(s). No primary
swarm was attracted. When swarm-tissue sachets were placed in hive traps and were also hung in nearby tree branches, 90.9% of the
swarms were attracted. Nine primary swarms formed clusters around the swarm attractant sachets while one secondary swarm was attracted
and established directly in a hive trap.

Atraccin y establecimiento directo de enjambres primarios y
secundarios de abejas melferas usando bolsas con tejido de
enjambre
Resumen
En un intento por atraer enjambres dentro de un colmenar y para inducir su establecimiento directo en colmenas trampa, se investig el uso
de un nuevo atrayente de enjambres de abejas de la miel en forma de bolsita que contiene una toallita hmeda con cido gernico, citral,
geraniol y aceite de rosa como atrayentes. Cuando las bolsitas de tejido de enjambre se colocaron en colmenas trampa a una distancia de 5
30 metros de las colonias, el 60% de los enjambres se establecieron directamente y de forma permanente en el interior de las colmenas
trampa. Todos los enjambres establecidos fueron secundarios, dirigidos por reina/s virgen. No se atrajo a ningn enjambre primario. Cuando
las bolsas con tejido de enjambre se colocaron en colmenas trampa y tambin colgadas en las ramas de rboles cercanos, el 90,9% de los
enjambres se sintieron atrados. Nueve enjambres primarios formaron grupos en torno a las bolsitas atrayentes de enjambres, mientras que
slo un enjambre secundario se sinti atrado y se estableci directamente en una colmena trampa.

Keywords: Swarm attraction, swarm-tissue, primary swarms, secondary swarms
Journal of Apicultural Research 52(2): 8 11 (2013) IBRA 2013
DOI 10.3896/IBRA.1.52.2.02
Introduction

Swarming is the natural way of reproduction for the honey bee colony.
It serves the dissemination of the species in new territories and food
resources. While primary swarms (i.e. the departure of the mated queen
with a great percentage of the colonys population) are a favourable
event for the colony, secondary swarms (i.e the departure of virgin
queen(s) with a limited number of honey bees) may be detrimental.
However, both cases are not welcomed by beekeepers, since they
represent a potential economic loss, both in terms of the bee population
and the honey resources. Simpson (1958) estimated that in an average
year, 10-40% of the colonies in a commercial apiary will swarm if left
unattended and management practices have been devised to reduce
its incidence by preventing swarming. Furthermore, attractive substances
Attraction and establishment of swarms using lures 9
have been applied for the capture and establishment of swarm clusters.
For the most part, the attractive substances used in lures have been
based on components which are present in the Nasonov gland (Free
et al., 1981a, 1981b, 1982; Lecher and Morse, 1983; Kigatiira et al.,
1986; Schmidt, 1994) or in the mandibular glands of queens (Butler
et al., 1961; Callow et al., 1964; Kigatiira et al., 1986). The success of
attraction is, however, variable and usually requires the placement of
traps at a long distance from the apiary, since under natural conditions,
swarms usually emigrate 200-1000m from their departure point
(Schmidt, 1995), although some experimental data have shown that
artificial swarms can select a nest within a range of 30m (Seeley and
Morse, 1977).
In an effort to attract and achieve the direct establishment of
swarms as close as possible to the swarming colonies, using a convenient,
low-cost method, we assessed the efficacy of a novel invention, the
swarm-tissue, specifically designed to attract swarms.

Materials and methods


The sachets containing the swarm-tissue are similar in shape and size
(4 cm x 3 cm) to commonly used hand wipe tissues. They contain
geranic acid, citral, geraniol and rose oil, dissolved in ethanol. The
ratio of the components, in 100 ml of the attractant is: 18.75 ml of
geranic acid, 28.75 ml of citral, 25 ml of geraniol and 1.25 ml of rose
oil, diluted in 26.25 ml of pure ethanol. Swarm-tissues were provided
by ANEL Standard, Greece and Vita (Europe) Limited, UK.
A commercial apiary of 40 healthy colonies was used for the
experiments. Overwintered hives were reduced to a single Langstroth
hive box in April and no manipulation for the control of swarming was
applied. All queens heading the colonies were marked by numbered
discs, attached to their thoraxes. Two experiments, A and B, began in
the middle of May and middle of June respectively, directly after six
swarms had been observed at the apiary. In experiment A, 20 hive-traps
Fig. 1. Attraction of swarms by swarm-tissue sachets. A. Swarm-tissue inside a hive-trap. B. Swarm-tissue sachet hung on tree branch.
C. Secondary swarm attracted to hive baited with swarm-tissue sachet. D. Primary swarm that has formed a cluster around a swarm-tissue
sachet hung on a tree branch.
were placed in two rows of 10 (at 5 m and at 30 m distance) in front
of the colonies. Five traps of each row were experimental and five
control. Each experimental hive-trap was followed sequentially by a
control hive-trap in the two rows. To achieve maximum attraction
(Schmidt, 2001) the swarm-tissues (olfactory attractant) were placed
on the top of an empty wax comb, inside Langstroth hive-bodies (Fig. 1A).
The sachet was punctured with a needle. Control traps were identical
to experimental traps but the tissue did not contain active ingredients.
The apiary was observed for swarms during each morning and afternoon
on a daily basis. The presence of a marked queen confirmed identification
as a primary swarm, while the absence of a mark and the presence of
virgin queen(s) indicated that the swarm was secondary. The traps in
which swarms were attracted and settled were removed and replaced
by new ones. In experiment B, we followed the same experimental
design as in experiment A, adding 10 sachets (5 experimental and 5
control) suspended on branches of 10 nearby trees at a distance of 5 m
from the colonies (Fig. 1B). All branches were at a height of 1.5 m in
order to allow easy observations of swarm clusters.


Results


During experiment A, 15 swarms departed from colonies: nine were
established permanently in hives (60%) where swarm-tissues were
present (Fig. 1C) while six departed shortly after forming a swarm-cluster
at nearby trees. No swarms were established in control hive-traps. Surprisingly,
careful observation of the arrested swarms and of the swarm-clusters
on trees, revealed that all established swarms were secondary swarms,
headed by one or more virgin queens. All swarm-clusters, on tree
branches, were primary swarms headed by mated queens. The attracted
secondary swarms showed a preference for the nearby line of traps
where eight were established (88.8%). They did not form clusters on
nearby trees but they flew directly into the hive traps. Scout honey
bees were present in experimental traps one to two days before swarming.
10 Papachristoforou, Ilanidis
Observation of all colonies from which swarms departed showed that
they were real swarms and not absconding swarms.
During experiment B, 11 swarms occurred. One secondary swarm
(9.09%) was established permanently in a hive trap where a swarm-tissue
was applied, in the 5 m row of hive traps, while 9 primary swarms
(81.81%) were attracted by swarm-tissues on nearby trees, where
they formed clusters (Fig. 1D). Only one primary swarm (9.09%)
formed a cluster at a tree where no swarm-tissue was present and
departed 4 hours later. The swarm clusters attracted by swarm tissues
did not depart until we established them in new beehives at dawn.
Three clusters remained in their positions for 72 hours post-swarming
until we established them permanently at their new hives. No swarm
was attracted by control hive-traps or by placebo sachets hung on
tree branches. A schematic representation of the results from the two
experiments is presented in Fig. 2.

Discussion

Our results show that the swarm-tissue applied inside hive traps, in
combination with open-air placement, provided effective attraction for
both primary and secondary swarms. Its simple application and the
novelty of the delivery method (the small sachet enables the lure to be
active for a 10-15 days period as was shown in preliminary experiments)
suggests that this could be a good candidate as a swarming control
method used by beekeepers. Although it was not possible to conduct
comparative studies with other commercial swarm-lure products
(short swarming period and harsh weather conditions which prevented
swarming the following year), the high percentage of attraction is
relevant and similar to experimental results described in previous
literature (Free et al. 1981b; Lecher and Morse, 1983; Kigatiira et al.,
1986; Schmidt, 1994, 2001). However, future field trials, comparing a
variety of swarm attraction lures could be of great apicultural interest.
Perhaps the most unexpected finding of this research was the
marked difference in swarming behaviour revealed between the primary
Fig. 2. Percentage of attracted swarms by the swarm-tissues sachets during experiment A (application only in hive-traps) and B (application
in hive-traps and on tree branches).
Attraction and establishment of swarms using lures 11
and the secondary swarms, since until now it has generally been
accepted that both primary and secondary swarms follow the same
swarming process (Gilley and Tarpy, 2005): they form a temporary
cluster at nearby positions after leaving their mother-colony until their
second departure for their final new nest. While this occurred in all
primary swarms for both experiments, it was never observed for any
of the secondary swarms. This finding could become the subject of
future experimentation which may reveal the factors leading to this
behaviour.


Acknowledgements

We thank ANEL Standard, Greece and Vita (Europe) Limited, UK for
providing the swarm-tissue sachets used at the experiments.


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