Swarm Help

Honey bees swarm as part of their colony's reproductive cycle, usually occuring between May and July. Whilst swarming bees are quite gentle and very unlikely to sting, they can cause a problem should the swarm end up somewhere in your garden, in an outbuilding or even a chimney. See Getting Advice for a swarm description and who to contact to come and collect them. Viable swarms will be taken away to the teaching apiary, checked for health and passed on to new beekeepers looking for their first colony.

Please note that, while we greatly appreciate your intention to remove bees in a humane way, rescuing bees from high buildings & chimneys is usually a very complex and sometimes risky task. It often involves ladders or even scaffolding and thus needs to be undertaken by professionals specialised in this sort of swarm collection.  Most of our team of volunteers are not trained or insured to perform such a task.

In the past we had to rely on contractors from the mainland to carry out these difficult jobs, however,  now one of our members can provide such services - and it's likely to cost considerably less that what the companies from the mainland usually charge. The IWBKA member to contact is:

• Guy Mattinson, phone number 07753 614794

Please go to the Getting Advice or Contact Us pages for more information on contacts. 

See Identifying Honey Bees for a brief description of what they look like and how they behave. See the Not Honey Bees section to identify the other more common and similar insects.