Spring Planting and Honeybee Swarming Season

Spring has arrived! In most of Sonoma County, the frosty nights are over and we can start thinking about planting the summer vegetable garden. We have lots of tomato and pepper plants ready for your garden, with some new and interesting varieties! You can pre-order through our online store now. The farm stand is open for order pickups Monday through Saturday, 3-6 PM.

Tomatoes: Black Krim, New Girl, Sun Gold Cherry, Brandywine, Green Tiger Cherry, Striped German, Moskvich, Pink Berkeley Tie Dye, Black Cherry

Sweet peppers: Classic Bell, Sweet Sunrise, Lunchbox (Yellow and Orange), Shishito, Jimmy Nardello, Nadapeño, Habanada

Hot peppers: Early Jalapeño, Jalapeño Lemon Spice, Jedi Jalapeño Pepper, Cayenne, Pasilla Bajio, Baron Ancho, Highlander Anaheim, Bangkok Hot Thai, Altiplano Serrano, Lemon Drop

Spring also turns the honey bee colony’s thoughts to swarming! As the queen cranks up egg-laying in early spring, the hive starts to get crowded–the signal for the bees to start thinking about splitting the colony and starting a new one. They carefully prepare by building queen cells and enticing the queen to lay eggs in them. This will be the new queen that will remain with the existing hive. The old queen will leave the hive with about half of the population of the worker bees in an amazing phenomenon called swarming. Imagine bees spilling out of the front of a hive (great video here) and taking flight, forming a tornado of bees!  Here’s another video from inside a swarm. Exciting!

The swarm leaves the hive and finds a place about 50-200 feet away to gather in a large clump on a tree branch, a fencepost, a car–pretty much anything that they can cling to. Once they are all hanging in a cluster, the scout bees go looking for a new home. When they find a good spot that is the right size and has the right-sized entrance, they come back to the cluster and do a waggle dance on the cluster, dancing their enthusiasm for the new home. Once the scouts all agree on the new location, they activate the other bees and then the whole cluster takes off and makes a literal beeline for the new home.

Many swarms in the wild don’t succeed in building a new colony. Swarming is a dangerous process for the bees, as they are leaving their warm, protected home with all the food they have stored to start anew with only the honey they can store in their stomachs. They are out in the elements until their scouts find a new home, and that can take a few days! If you see a swarm, you can help save the bees by calling a beekeeper to come and collect it and give it a home. The Sonoma County Beekeepers Association (SCBA) has quite a few beekeepers on call to help you out. Just go to their Report a Swarm page to find a list of names and phone numbers.