We must BEE crazy!

What seemed like a good idea at the time has turned into an all consuming project because eight weeks ago we got some bees! Ask any beekeeper in the UK and they will tell you that 2025 has been the most unusual year with such hot dry weather and abundant pollen sources, so it's not surprising that we have experienced and learned more in our first few weeks than most new beekeepers do in their first few years.

Honey Bees

Here are some of the key moments we captured ...

Preparing the apiary

There are so many things to consider when deciding where to put your hives. Apparently, bees like their hives to be on the brow of a hill (so that any rain runs downhill and the hives don't get too wet), they prefer some tree cover (for shade) and want to be facing East to capture the early morning sun and afternoon shade.

Baby bee orientation flights

When baby bees have hatched and leave the hive for the first time, they carry out orientation flights. This basically involves flying in increasing circles to learn where their hive is and practice landing and finding their way back inside.

Baby Bee Orientation Flights

Bees like sticking things together!

No matter how well you prepare their hive, the bees will want to customise and personalise it for themselves. They have a knack of finding the smallest spaces and filling them with sticky gooey propolis and take great delight in building combs between the frames to stick them together.

Bees will swarm!

If a hive starts to become overcrowded, a portion of the colony (including the queen) will often leave to find a new home and establish a new colony elsewhere. This is called swarming and is basically a way for the bees to split and expand their population. Despite giving them plenty of extra space by adding additional sections to their hive, one of our colonies decided to swarm and took up residence in a local tree!

How do you capture a swarm? Shake the tree and catch the bees in a nucleus hive (polystyrene box). You know when you've got the queen because all the other bees follow her wherever she goes. It took over 2 hours for our queen to dislodge herself from the branch and take up residence but we finally got all the bees settled in the their new temporary home.

Bees will be bees!

It would really help if bees would read the beekeeping books, watch some YouTube videos and join the local Beekeepers Association. This way, they might learn how they are supposed to behave! The biggest lesson we have learned over recent weeks is that, despite all our best intentions and efforts, bees will be bees! They are amazing creatures but are unpredictable and will do things their way.