Swarms, Ground Bees, and Why We Don’t Go Full Demolition Derby on a Hive

Yes, we absolutely do pick up swarms. If you spot a cluster of honeybees hanging from a tree branch, fence post, mailbox, or some other oddly chosen piece of real estate, give us a call at (724-822-3854) and we’ll gladly come scoop them up anywhere in the Butler County, PA area. Before everyone hits full panic mode and declares a backyard bee emergency, though, let’s take a quick stroll through Bee Identification 101. Not every buzzing crowd is a honeybee swarm, and knowing the difference between a true swarm and our native ground-dwelling pollinators can save a whole lot of unnecessary worry, phone calls, and dramatic pointing at the lawn. 🐝

Every spring and early summer, the bee panic hotline starts buzzing:

“There’s a giant ball of bees hanging from my tree!”
“Bees are flying in and out of the ground by my shed!”
“Can you come remove them?”

This is usually where we play detective and sort out two very different situations: a swarm of honeybees and ground-nesting bees. They may both involve fuzzy little aviators, but they are about as similar as a school bus and a motorcycle. Both get you somewhere, but the ride is very different.

The Great Bee Mix-Up

When most people see “a lot of bees,” they assume one thing: honeybees have moved in and must be relocated immediately.

Not so fast.

A huge number of the bees people spot in spring are actually native ground bees, not honeybees at all. These solitary bees are often mistaken for an aggressive infestation when they are really just tiny homeowners minding their own business.

Honeybees, on the other hand, tend to be the ones making dramatic public appearances with their “let’s move the whole neighborhood at once” swarm behavior.

Think of it this way:

Ground bees are the quiet neighbors who keep to themselves and wave politely from across the yard.

Swarming honeybees are the family moving cross-country with three U-Hauls and all their cousins.

What Is a Swarm?

A swarm happens when a honeybee colony gets crowded and decides it is time to split.

The old queen leaves with thousands of worker bees to search for a new home, while a new queen takes over the original hive.

For a short time, that traveling cluster may land on a tree branch, fence post, mailbox, or some other wildly inconvenient place. They gather into that familiar football-shaped clump while scout bees search for permanent housing.

Here is the surprising part: Swarms are usually very gentle.

They are not defending honey, brood, or a hive. They are basically road-tripping with packed suitcases and nowhere to unpack yet. Their focus is finding real estate, not causing trouble.

This is why beekeepers are often happy to collect swarms. It is like free bee delivery, nature’s version of curbside pickup.

What About Ground Bees?

Ground bees are a completely different story.

These are often solitary native bees that nest in small burrows in sandy or loose soil. You might notice little volcano-shaped mounds of dirt with bees darting in and out.

This can look alarming, but most ground bees are incredibly docile. Many females can sting, but rarely do. Males cannot sting at all, though they may hover around trying to look intimidating. It is all showmanship. Tiny bee theater.

They are also excellent pollinators and usually only stay active for a few weeks before moving on.

Translation: if you leave them alone, they will often solve the “problem” themselves.

Why We Don’t Do Structural Bee Removal

This is the question that surprises people most.

“Can’t you just cut open the wall and take the bees?”

Technically? Sometimes.

Realistically? We do not.

Structural removals involve opening walls, soffits, roofs, floors, or other parts of a building to access a colony that has built comb inside.

That is not a simple “grab the bees and go” situation.

It often means:

• Cutting into finished structures
• Locating the full extent of comb and honey stores
• Removing every bit of wax, brood, and honey
• Preventing melted honey from causing future damage
• Repairing access points so another colony does not move in

That is major work requiring construction knowledge, liability coverage, and often specialized removal equipment.

For small hobby beekeepers like us, structural removal crosses the line from “bee rescue” into “unexpected home renovation project.”

And trust me, no one wants a surprise sentence that starts with: “Well, we had to open your dining room wall…”

Instead, if bees are established inside a structure, we recommend contacting a professional bee removal specialist or licensed pest and wildlife expert who handles cut-outs properly.

When to Call a Beekeeper

Give a beekeeper a call if:

🐝 You have a visible hanging cluster of honeybees
🐝 The bees have only recently appeared
🐝 They are exposed and accessible

If the bees are entering a wall, chimney, soffit, or other enclosed structure, that is usually beyond a standard swarm pickup.

If they are in the ground and seem calm, chances are they are native ground bees and best left alone.

A Little Bee Patience Goes a Long Way

Not every buzzing visitor is a crisis.

Sometimes it is a honeybee swarm looking for a fresh start.
Sometimes it is native ground bees doing their pollinator thing.
And sometimes the best course of action is simply to pause, observe, and let nature do what it has been doing for millions of years.

The bees generally know what they are doing.

Even if they occasionally choose the world’s least convenient mailbox. 🐝📬

Honeybees, Tiny Goggles, and the Great Flower Blur Mystery 🐝

There’s a question buzzing around the scientific world that honestly sounds like it was dreamed up during a late-night beekeeping session beside a smoker and a half-empty mug of coffee:

Can honeybees see moving objects better than still ones?

As it turns out… yes. And that changes how we think about flowers, flight, and the tiny airborne math wizards we call bees.

A recent study published in the journals.biologists.com explored how motion affects visual acuity in honeybees. In plain English: researchers wanted to know whether moving things are easier for bees to see than stationary ones.

Spoiler alert: bees apparently love a little razzle-dazzle.

The Bee Eye View

Honeybees do not see the world the way we do. Their compound eyes are made up of thousands of tiny visual units called ommatidia. Imagine trying to watch television through a disco ball made of microscopic kaleidoscopes. That’s roughly the neighborhood.

Because of this, bees are not famous for razor-sharp detail. They can’t sit twenty yards away and admire the fine print on your fancy garden sign. But they are astonishingly good at detecting movement, patterns, contrast, and optic flow while flying at what feels like irresponsible speeds directly into your face.

The researchers used a Y-maze setup where bees had to choose between visual patterns. Some patterns stayed still. Others moved. The scientists then measured how well the bees could distinguish details under those different conditions.

The result?

Motion helped the bees detect visual information more effectively.

Basically, a moving object grabs a bee’s attention like someone dramatically waving a pie at a county fair.

Why This Matters to Flowers

This is where things get delightfully weird.

Flowers are not exactly famous for sprinting around meadows. But many flowers do sway, bob, wobble, and shimmy in the wind. Previous research connected to this team suggested bees may actually prefer oscillating flowers.

So imagine a breezy spring afternoon in the apiary.

One flower stands perfectly still like it’s posing for a Victorian portrait.

Another dances around in the wind like it just heard banjo music.

The bee may spot the dancing flower more easily because movement enhances visual detection.

In other words, flowers might accidentally be running tiny roadside attraction campaigns.

“Fresh nectar here! Now featuring interpretive dance!”

Tiny Pilots with Furious Processing Power

One of my favorite things about bee research is realizing over and over again that bees are not merely fuzzy honey tubes with wings.

These insects are aerial navigation experts:

• They calculate speed using optic flow.
• They avoid collisions in cluttered spaces.
• They recognize patterns and landmarks.
• They adapt flight based on gaps and obstacles.

And now we know motion itself may sharpen what they can perceive.

Meanwhile, I still walk into the cedar chest in daylight.

What This Means for Beekeepers

For backyard beekeepers, this study adds another little layer to understanding forage behavior.

It may help explain why bees sometimes seem more interested in certain patches during breezy weather. It also reinforces how visually tuned bees are to movement in the environment. A waving patch of blooms might essentially glow brighter in "BeeVision" than something perfectly still.

Honestly, the more scientists study bees, the more they sound like tiny biological drones designed by an intelligent designer.

Final Thoughts from the Hive

The world of a honeybee is not static. It’s alive with motion, vibration, shifting light, and moving color. This study reminds us that bees are not just seeing flowers. They are tracking a constantly moving symphony of visual information while flying at high speed on wings thinner than potato chips.

And somehow, despite all of this complexity, they still manage to return home carrying pollen pants and the attitude of someone who absolutely pays the mortgage around here.

Nature is ridiculous.

And I mean that in the most admiring way possible.

World Bee Day

Today we celebrate World Bee Day, a reminder that creatures small enough to fit on your fingertip are very important to our Earth. 🐝🌼

World Bee Day is held each year on May 20 to raise awareness about the essential role bees and other pollinators play in our ecosystems and food supply. The date honors Anton Janša, a pioneer of modern beekeeping from Slovenia, who recognized centuries ago just how remarkable honey bees truly are.

Bees are responsible for pollinating many of the foods we enjoy every day, including apples, blueberries, cucumbers, almonds, pumpkins, and countless wildflowers that support wildlife and healthy ecosystems. In fact, a huge portion of the world’s food production depends on pollinators. Without them, grocery store shelves and backyard gardens would look very different.

But bees face growing challenges from habitat loss, pesticides, disease, parasites like varroa mites, and changing weather patterns. Supporting pollinators can be as simple as planting native flowers, reducing pesticide use, leaving a little patch of “wild” in your yard, or supporting local beekeepers.

For us as beekeepers, bees become more than insects pretty quickly. They’re teachers of patience, resilience, teamwork, and respect for nature. A hive is equal parts engineering marvel, bustling city, and organized chaos. One moment they’re gently working clover blooms in the sunshine, and the next they’re staging airport-level security because you opened the hive one frame too fast.

So today, take a moment to appreciate the tiny fuzzy workers helping keep the world blooming. Long live the queens, the workers, the drones, and every pollen-covered little nectar pirate out there making life sweeter. 🍯

Weekend and Almost Swarm

There are peaceful country drives… and then there are bee runs. 🐝🚙💨

Visit to Steve's Bees ~ Lucinda, PA

This week’s adventure took us up to Steve's Bees to pick up our newest ladies. Packages loaded, excitement high, weather questionable. The kind of spring day where the clouds look personally offended.

Now, most sensible people might wear their bee hoods for the ride home.

We are apparently not most sensible people.

To be fair, the bees were packaged. Mostly contained. “Mostly” doing some very ambitious heavy lifting here.

By the time we hit the road in the Bronco Sport, we noticed a few escape artists buzzing around the vehicle. Then a few more. Then roughly sixty tiny airborne felons circling the interior like they were planning a hostile takeover of the vehicle. Eventually, nearly all of them gathered on my driver’s side window while I was driving, creating what can only be described as the world’s least reassuring blind spot.

A couple decided I looked trustworthy enough to land on. One settled on my chest. Another parked itself on my arm. At this point, there’s a very specific kind of calm you enter. It’s somewhere between “nature documentary narrator” and “this is how the local newspaper writes about me.”

Surprisingly, nobody got stung.

The bees honestly had every reason to be cranky. Saturday’s weather was absolutely miserable. Cold, wet, muddy, and windy. Honey bees hate cold rain about as much as cats hate bathtubs. Then after settling in, they got moved again Monday, which bees also do not appreciate. Imagine someone shaking your entire house, relocating it, and then expecting you to immediately go back to work collecting groceries.

Still, they made the trip like champs. They are now settled in a hive that isn't a cardboard bee mover.

Tuesday ~ Almost Swarm at Getz Yard

Then came Tuesday.

While mowing, Dad noticed one of the hives had bees hanging in a giant cluster on the front entrance. This behavior is called bearding. In the middle of summer, bearding is pretty common. Bees gather outside the hive in warm weather to help regulate temperature and airflow inside. Think of it as thousands of tiny HVAC technicians working overtime.

But in early spring? ...that gets our attention.

Especially because if you’ve been following along, you know we already split this hive once earlier this season.

A split is basically controlled bee math. Beekeepers intentionally divide a strong colony into two colonies to reduce overcrowding and help prevent swarming. Swarming is when the old queen leaves with about half the hive population to start a new colony somewhere else. From the bees’ perspective, it’s reproduction and survival. From the beekeeper’s perspective, it’s watching your workforce fly into a tree and disappear into the sunset like a tiny winged Western movie.

So Chris and Liz dug into the hive to investigate. And wow.

The colony was absolutely bursting with bees. Wall to wall fuzz. They also found multiple swarm cells, which are special queen cells the bees build when they’re preparing to swarm. They look like little peanut-shaped capsules hanging from the frames. Once you see several of them, the bees are basically announcing, “We have plans, and you are not included.”

No queen was found during the inspection, but honestly, that isn’t shocking in a hive exploding with bees. Finding one queen among tens of thousands of moving insects can feel like trying to spot a single grain of rice in a shag carpet.

The good news is they were able to separate the swarm cells into two hives and add empty drawn comb to give the colonies more room. Empty comb is valuable because it gives bees instant space for brood or honey storage without having to spend energy building wax first. More room often helps calm the colony’s urge to swarm.

At least that’s the plan. With bees, sometimes you feel like a seasoned beekeeper. Other times you’re just a confused landlord standing in a cloud of insects asking everyone politely to stop making queens.

So now we wait, watch, and hope the girls decide to stay home instead of launching Operation Airborne Relocation.

 

Beekeeping season has officially begun. Chaos included. 🐝

Spring 2026!

Dearest gentle readers, the social season is fully underway in the apiary, and a new group of ladies has officially arrived at the estate. Fresh from Mann Lake, these Buckfast bees have already caused quite the stir among the local residents with their pleasant temperaments, lighter coloring, and suspiciously charming behavior.

Thankfully, unlike Bridgerton, the only drama in our bee yard so far has involved a smoker that wouldn’t stay lit and someone forgetting where they set the hive tool down for the fifteenth time.

May Activities

As May progresses, we are feeding our little colonies due to the cold and wet weather. But they are all very happy still. We are also keeping a close eye to make sure no one swarms!

Got a swarm? Call us!

This weekend (May 9th), we will travel up to Lucinda, PA. After lunch with our Aunt, we'll stop and pickup a couple nucs from Steve. We met Steve at a festival at one of the local farms in Clarion. Steve's Bees Honey can be found all over Clarion County. It also just happens that he is a distant cousin of mine!

Apimaye Insulated Hive

There’s a new resident in our apiary this season: an Apimaye insulated hive system. We recently picked up one of their 10-frame hive sets and decided it was too interesting not to put through a real-world test. Most of us are used to the classic wooden Langstroth setup: pine boxes, propolis-glued lids, warped covers after a few wet Pennsylvania seasons, and the annual game of “how much ventilation is enough but not too much?” The Apimaye hives take a very different approach. These hives are built from insulated, double-walled food-grade plastic with built-in ventilation controls, feeders, entrance reducers, and locking components all integrated into the design.

What really caught our attention was the focus on temperature stability and moisture control. Traditional wooden hives do a decent job, but bees spend an enormous amount of energy heating and cooling the colony through the seasons. Apimaye’s insulated design aims to reduce that workload so colonies can conserve resources during winter and build up faster in spring. The system is still compatible with standard 10-frame Langstroth equipment, which means we can experiment without rebuilding our entire operation around proprietary gear. We can even stack wooden honey supers on top during the summer months.

Over the coming months, we’ll be treating this hive like a little bee-side science project. We want to compare brood development, honey stores, overwintering success, moisture levels, and overall colony temperament against our more traditional wooden setups. Will the insulation help the bees thrive during our unpredictable Pennsylvania weather swings? Will ventilation management actually be easier, or just more complicated with extra moving parts? And perhaps most importantly: will the bees seem happier working inside what looks suspiciously like the luxury cabin version of a hive? 🐝

At the very least, the Apimaye setup already wins points for thoughtful engineering. Everything snaps together with a satisfying “this was designed by someone who actually keeps bees” kind of feel. Whether it becomes our future standard or just an interesting experiment remains to be seen, but that’s half the fun of beekeeping anyway. Every hive teaches you something new.

April Activities

We ordered a 3-pound package of Buckfast bees from Mann Lake, and right away these girls stood out. Not only are they adorable, but compared to some of our other bees, they seem lighter in color and somehow just... cuter. Yes, apparently bee aesthetics are now part of our beekeeping criteria.

So why Buckfasts? These bees were originally developed by combining different honey bee lines to create a calmer, hardier hybrid with improved disease resistance and productivity. One of the first things we noticed after installing them was how relaxed they were. Chris even commented that “the ladies are happy,” which, in beekeeper language, is basically a five-star review.

From everything I’ve read, Buckfast bees are known for being excellent foragers, even during cooler or cloudy weather when other colonies might stay home and complain about the forecast. They also have a reputation for strong honey production while being conservative with their winter stores, which feels like a pretty good combination for Pennsylvania beekeeping. Between their temperament, resilience, and work ethic, they seemed like a great colony to experiment with this season.

Of course, our Saskatraz girls are still out there doing their thing too, and we’ve been really happy with them. If anything, adding Buckfast genetics into the apiary should make for an interesting comparison and maybe even strengthen the overall diversity of our colonies moving forward.

Here’s a video from right after the install:

Fun Activity

What kind of bees are you seeing around your place? Check out what Healthy Recipes posted in July 2025. Chris found this picture the other day and it really is a nice overview of some of the types of bees out there. There you can see how the Buckfast Bee compares to others.

Buckfast Bees - ChatGPT Opinion

Buckfast bee are kind of the “Swiss Army knife” of the beekeeping world 🐝⚙️

They were developed in the early 1900s by a monk named Brother Adam at Buckfast Abbey after disease wiped out much of the local bee population. He spent decades selectively breeding bees from all over Europe and the Middle East to create a colony that was productive, gentle, and hardy.

Buckfast bees are known for:

• Calm temperament. Many beekeepers say they’re easier to work without turning the hive into a tiny airborne riot.
• Strong honey production. They build up fast in spring and forage aggressively.
• Lower swarming tendency compared to some other strains.
• Good overwintering ability when properly managed.
• Excellent hygienic behavior, which can help with disease resistance.

A few tradeoffs:

• Because they’re hybrids, queens may not “breed true” if they mate naturally. A second-generation Buckfast colony can behave very differently from the original line.
• Some lines can become a bit too prolific, meaning you need to stay ahead on space management.
• Availability and quality vary a lot depending on the breeder.

Compared to Italian honey bee:

• Buckfasts are often calmer and more conservative with winter stores.
• Italians are usually easier to source and can explode with brood production.

Compared to Carniolan honey bee:

• Buckfasts tend to swarm less.
• Carniolans often winter in smaller clusters and handle cold very efficiently.

For western Pennsylvania winters, a well-bred Buckfast line can do quite well if you keep mites under control and make sure they enter winter heavy enough. Around your area, a lot of beekeepers end up liking them because they’re productive without feeling like every hive inspection is a medieval siege.

(AI Generated Buckfast Bee fact list)

Year of No Writing!?

Wow - it's been almost a year and I haven't written a word here? It's certainly been a crazy time for us over the year personally. Lots of illness, but the Apiary goes on.

Year in Review

We had two swarms in early spring. Seems like we'll need to watch the weather more closely. When do swarms happen? When the hive gets too small to support the number of bees if it happens in Spring!

If you ever see one in Butler or Saxonburg area, we're happy to come catch them!

April 27th Swarm

 

 

April 30th Swarm

 

May 1st Swarm

 

Healthy Swarms?

How do you keep the swarms healthy? Well, that can be tough. But feeding and checking them frequently can help. One of the swarms lost its queen. In that case, you can order a queen from various retailers or from a local beekeeper who sells queens. Here is our replacement queen - a Saskatraz queen.

She comes with a couple worker bees. I brought her inside while I worked so that she wouldn't get cold until I had time to suit up and go put her in the hive.

What else happened in nature during 2024?

Did you all get to see the eclipse? We headed south to Hot Springs, Arkansas, to be in the line of totality. What a sight to see!

Who stepped outside to watch aurora borealis? How cool that it would head as far south as us in PA? And not just once, but twice!

Year to Come

For the upcoming year, we have planned to attend the Western Pennsylvania Beekeeping Seminar on February 7th and 8th. I hope if you are new to beekeeping or thinking about starting this as a hobby, you come! Great information and a way to network with other beekeepers!

I've already ordered a nuc for replacing any deadouts from this winter. Mann Lake has several to choose from. This year, I am going to try OHB Golden West variety. I'll let you know what they are and how it goes!

Extreme Cold

Our recent extreme cold has left us short a couple hives since November. Chris noted we lost at least two. We haven't had cold like this in a while. It can be very difficult to keep them going during cold months.

One thing you can do is wrap the hives. We do this with either bee cozies - yes, you read that right. Or just using Expanded Polystyrene Board Insulation and a little bit of duct tape.

The other thing is to keep them happy by feeding them. There's lots of recipes. I can't say which one is best - but you do what you want to do. This year we are trying Pro-Winter Feed. We have tried sugar patties, fondant and other forms of feed. We have bought the fondant in bulk from Stover & Company from down in Cheswick, PA.

Get Ahead of Swarms

So what is our plan to limit the number of swarms this year? We are going to restudy Randy Oliver's article on The Swarming Impulse. What are his tips?

• Check hives early - in March for us in PA. Look for swarm cells.
• Put a box on early. Bees work upward in the hive. So if they get to the lid and need more space, they need another box - even if the bottom box is empty.

Call us if you see one! I'm happy to come out and collect it - if it isn't too high or in a wall.... Swarms happen during April through early June. You can see swarms later in the year, but in PA, those are the typical months.

Check Your Skills

What is this bump out on the frame? And what kind?

Spring is so close!

As spring approaches, for you new beekeepers - check out the following article from BetterBee!  It is the best guide into becoming a new beekeeper: