Swarm Collection
Swarm Season is most common April through June in the Puget Sound, becoming less likely the closer we get into late august and into fall. Please review the images below to confirm that what you are seeing are Honeybees. We cannot provide help for yellow jackets, wasps, or bumblebees.
If you are outside of Snohomish County/north King County, please search for your nearest bee club or swarm catchers by searching "Honeybee Swarms" + your county. This is the quickest way to access local help.
Not Honeybees click each image to learn more
Honeybee Swarm
Below are pictures of honeybee swarms as well as established feral honeybee colonies. If you see ones of these, please send an email to swarm@nwdba.org & include the following information:
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Name & Phone Number
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Physical Location of the Honeybees, including approximated height.
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Picture if possible
We may ask a few questions in order to validate that what you are seeing is not a case of mistaken identity & then will send your information to our volunteers that will reach out to you directly to coordinate the swarm.
What to expect:
One of our beekeeping volunteers will reach out to you to coordinate details of arriving of your property, it's helpful to then to share more information about the location of the bees so they bring the proper equipment.
It's common for a beekeeper to want to leave the equipment until dusk or the next morning to collect as many bees as possible from the swarm. If not (due to distance or personal schedule or preference), that's ok, the remaining bees will return to their original home within a couple days.
Honeybee swarms are a colony's natural way of reproducing. The swarm may stay in their temporary clustered location for a few hours, or a few days. The honeybees area actively searching for a new cavity to call home, collecting them helps keep them out of buildings and other places they should not be.