The natural reproductive process by which a honey bee colony splits, in which the old queen departs the hive together with roughly half the worker bees to found a new colony, while a newly reared queen remains behind with the rest. The swarm first clusters temporarily on a nearby branch or structure while scout bees search for a suitable new nest cavity, a vulnerable but usually calm phase in which the bees, having gorged on honey before leaving, are far less defensive than they are at the hive.
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