Urban Beekeeping Beginners:
Our Triumphs and Failures (part 2)

In this second instalment of our journey into urban beekeeping, we transfer our new bees into the hive and conduct our first hive inspection. We then explain the importance of regular hive inspections to prevent swarming and highlight the key signals to look out for when a colony is about to swarm. We also look at why people have an irrational fear of swarming bees and how this natural behaviour is negatively portrayed in Hollywood movies. We conclude this part of our journey with an account of our own swarm experience, which resulted in the loss of over half our bees.

Owen & Lorna x

1. We get cracking

In our previous post on urban beekeeping, I went through the backstory of how we got into beekeeping and the preparation we gave ourselves before taking the plunge.

Despite having zero experience in keeping bees, we had eschewed joining our local beekeeping association (unwisely, as it turned out), as neither of us were enthusiastic joiners of things and we felt we’d read enough books and watched enough YouTube videos to get cracking on our own.

As previously described, we’d placed our new bees (still in their nuc box) on top of their new hive (as advised by our supplier) and watched them emerge, not as an angry plume (as I had feared), but as a gentle stream of inmates, relieved to be out of their temporary prison. This first step was to get them used to their new surroundings before moving them into their new home. We now turned, with some trepidation, to the second step of this process – transferring them into the hive..

2. Transferring our bees to the hive

As I was still a little afraid of our new furry friends, transferring them into the hive was a task I was happy to leave to my husband, on this occasion. He went about it in his usual bish-bash-bosh manner, leaving me (feeling like a bit of a wuss, tbh) watching from behind the glass of our greenhouse, which stood right next to the hive. The process was quite simple; we just had to remove five empty frames (there are 12 in total) from the brood box of our brand new hive and replace them with the five bee-filled frames from the nuc box.

To my surprise, the bees were very calm and tolerant of my hubby’s inexperienced handling, as he carefully lifted each bee-covered frame from out of the nuc box into the brood box of the hive.

As I watched, I could see we had plenty of sealed brood (larvae in the pupae stage) as well as lots of curled up larvae in cells that had not yet been sealed. Here and there, newly emerging bees were chewing their way out of their hexagonal prison cells.

We found her majesty the queen on the second to last frame, busily deposited eggs into the cells, while her workers frantically fussed about her. She was much larger than they were and had a large yellow spot on her abdomen, painted there to help beekeepers quickly identify her as a queen.

The whole process of transferring the bees took only about 15 minutes, during which time some of the bees spilled out of the hive entrance and started fanning their wings. We knew that this behaviour was intended to direct pheromones into the air to let any flying bees know that the colony had moved.

We then closed up the hive and left them to it. We knew we would need to inspect them thereafter every 7-10 days to check for swarm cells and signs of disease (more on this later), but for now, we walked away feeling quite chuffed at our achievement.

3. Doing a hive inspection

As my historian husband would tell you, our bees were a variety known as Buckfast, a strain first bred way back in 1919 by one Brother Adam, a Benedictine monk who, until 1998, was head beekeeper at Buckfast Abbey in Devon. We chose Buckfast because they are known to be a very gentle, non-aggressive strain and, as such, an ideal bee for beginners.

As the weeks went by, I became more confident around our bees, with my initial fears soon fading when I saw how calm and gentle they were. Hubby did the weekly inspections early doors but within a few weeks, I found myself doing my first solo inspection (see above image).. It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life.

4. Urban beekeeping dummies!

As all experienced beekeepers (which we weren’t) will tell you, hive inspection is an absolute must if you want to preserve colony health and prevent the one thing that all beekeepers dread – swarming! To that end, we diligently did weekly inspections of all the frames in the brood box, looking out for signs of disease, parasites (Varroa Mite) and, especially, queen cells (aka, swarm cells).

Throughout, we religiously turned to our “bible” texts, Beekeeping For Dummies and the Haynes Bee Manual for guidance, as we knew the presence of queen cells was a good indicator that a colony is about to swarm (or at least thinking about it). Removing these queen cells (with the lava inside) is one of the ways you can deter a colony from swarming, as bees won’t swarm without a queen.

Urban beekeeping fact check: Queen cells resemble peanut shells and are usually attached to the bottom of the brood frames. The larvae inside queen cells are fed royal jelly to change them from ordinary worker bees to queens. After 9 days, the cell is “capped”, leaving the queen inside to eat her way out about a week later.

From egg to queen, the whole process takes about 16 days. The new queen will then seek out any unhatched rivals and sting them to death. When it comes to queen bees, there can be only one!

5. Why bees swarm

If there’s one subject that dominates urban beekeeping forums more than any other, it’s swarming, a natural bee behaviour whereby up to 60% of a colony can suddenly upsticks and abscond from the hive.

Today, we have an irrational fear of swarming bees, mostly because of Hollywood movies that portray bees negatively. However, in truth, bees rarely sting unless provoked and they are actually at their most docile when swarming. In fact, a swarm is nothing more than bees leaving an overcrowded hive to find a new home.

Urban beekeeping fact check: Traditionally, Hollywood movies have often portrayed bees in an unrealistic and negative way. Examples include The Swarm, which depicts a gigantic swarm of African killer bees descending on Texas, and the more recent The Wicker Man, a modern remake of the 1973 British horror cult classic of the same name.

Swarming is not without risk to the bees, as inclement weather, birds, wasps and even humans can all pose a threat. For beekeepers too, swarming brings risks and most take steps to avert it. Here are a few of the reasons why:

• It can reduce the strength of the original colony, making it vulnerable to bees from other hives (robber bees) who will steal honey and pollen stores if the colony is to small to defend itself.
• It can reduce a colony’s chances of surviving the winter, especially if it swarms more than once.
• Swarming can affect honey production, meaning the beekeeper may have little or no honey to show for his/her efforts at the end of the season.
• In built-up areas, neighbours may not be impressed to find your bees hanging from a tree in their garden where their children are playing.

6. Why our bees swarmed!

June of 2022 brought a sad loss to our household, when our oldest cat, Woody, who had been poorly for some weeks, suffered a stroke and had to be put to sleep. At 2o years’ old, he’d certainly had a good innings but it was still like losing a much loved member of our family (as all our cats are).

Hubby was particularly grief stricken, as Woody had come with him from a previous relationship. Having known Woody from a kitten, he now had the difficult task of saying goodbye.

Throughout this time of grief and distraction, we faltered somewhat with our regular hive inspections and, a week after Woody’s death, our bees swarmed. It happened without us even noticing and it took our next door neighbour to alert us that our bees were hanging from a tree branch in his garden.

Urban beekeeping fact check: Swarming usually happens when the worker bees start to feel overcrowded and so eject about half their number (along with the queen!) to create more room.

The evictees usually end up clustering on a nearby tree branch, fence or wall, where they will stay until scout bees find a new home. Back in the old colony, workers select a new queen from among the existing larvae.

At the time, we didn’t feel experienced or confident enough to collect the swarm ourselves. Nor did we have anywhere to put them in any case, as a swarm will not be returned to the parent colony.

It was decided that a local swarm collector should be called in. A couple of hours later, away he went with our (valuable!) bees, which would now go towards increasing the size of his apiary…😠

Next: Urban Beekeeping Beginners (part 3)