Free bees or free trouble?

It’s exciting to catch swarms. It has all the thrill of an unpredictable treasure hunt and the prospect of capturing a potentially-valuable colony that might otherwise have cost you more than a hundred bucks. Not to mention any ego-gratification you get from bystanders peering anxiously out the window as you coolly swoop in and dump a buzzing, scary ball o’ bees into a hive or nuc box. (You aren’t required to admit that hiving a recent swarm takes about as much moxie as picking up a kitten.)

If you can’t prevent them, catching swarms from your own hives is a matter of both relief (they didn’t get away, after all!) and civic duty, since your bees might very well take up residence in someone else's property and become an expensive nuisance that they have to pay to have removed.

Should you move bee swarms to your bee yard?

But what about other bees from unknown sources? Is it safe to collect them and add them directly to your apiary? This depends on your risk tolerance, but the most conservative answer is, no. But that doesn’t mean that you need to avoid catching swarms. The answer is to move them to a separate quarantine yard, where you will have a chance to observe them and deal with any problems they have brought along.

At the very least they will likely have varroa mites, with perhaps a different viral disease profile than the ones already in your yard. Small hive beetles can fly along with swarms. Other less-common pests can come on the bodies of the bees. And there is always the possibility of bringing along infectious agents of bee diseases, including the foulbrood diseases. It is often said that sick colonies won’t swarm, and that’s true. But hives that are only in mild stages of diseases may swarm. And it is possible that a "swarm" is really an absconded colony on the run from a hive that has become uninhabitable due to pests or disease.

Placing new swarms in a separate quarantine yard reduces risks

Putting the new swarms in a quarantine yard and keeping them there through a whole summer and winter allows you to assess them deeply and treat or eliminate any problems that they may have. Then you can confidently bring them into your own yard, or give or sell them to other beekeepers with a clean conscience. All that it costs is a modest amount of additional gear (extra hive tools, mostly) and thoughtful, one-way-only movement of any resources, such as equipment and frames of brood and honey. These should only go from your main apiary to the quarantined hives, not the other way around, until the new bees have proved themselves to be healthy.

How far away should the sick bay be? If you had the time to attend to two yards separated by a couple of miles, that would be great. If you don’t have that luxury then use as much separation as you can get at your principal site. Even a few hundred feet is better than nothing.

So, go ahead, catch swarms! You may get lucky and acquire some true "survivor" genetics from great queen lines. Just protect your own bees from unpredictable risks at the same time by setting up a quarantine yard.