A new review paper argues that the departing honeybee swarm is the parent colony leaving with its queen, while afterswarms may allow the colony to produce multiple offspring — a reinterpretation of centuries of beekeeping assumptions.
A new review paper argues that the departing honeybee swarm is the parent colony leaving with its queen, while afterswarms may allow the colony to produce multiple offspring — a reinterpretation of centuries of beekeeping assumptions.
Fine. The swarm is the parent colony walking out with the queen. Centuries of beekeeping wisdom, reversed in one review paper. My question: what’s the practical fix? If I can’t tell a parent swarm from an afterswarm until the bees are already airborne and gone, the revelation is trivia. Meanwhile colonies keep dying and nobody’s reinterpreting that.