Scott Whitaker

Has a 🐝🐝🐝 swarm moved into my house? Or is it scout bees? 🐝 I’m getting many phone calls from clients concerned about bee activity around their property. In most cases, they don’t have a swarm, but they do have bees scouting for a new home, which can confuse the untrained eye. 🐝 Two significant indicators differentiate scouting from swarms: 1. Scouts will check out multiple entry points along a building, whereas bees will be observed coming and going from just one hole once the swarm moves in. 2. Bees finding their way inside the building’s rooms are almost certainly scouts who have lost their way. After checking out a potential nest site in a wall or the ceiling, they take the wrong exit and find themselves trapped inside the building. They will often be found at windows trying to escape. 🐝 Spring has sprung, and bee colonies are swarming, which is the natural reproduction of the super-organism. In a nutshell, colonies create a new queen, and the old queen leaves with 50 to 70% of the population to find a new home. Once a swarm leaves their old hive, they send out scout bees to find a new home. 🐝 Thanks to Ben from Coolum (swarm 1) and Dani from Caloundra (swarm 2) for these great videos, which document the intense scouting and the swarm’s arrival the following day. 🐝 — © @hinterlandbees

Swarm drop! Swarms everywhere! 🐝 I’ve been kept busy this week with some monster swarms. It’s mid-summer, and swarm season is usually wrapped up by now, but we’ve had the perfect storm for swarm season 2.0 🐝 The weather has been hot, humid, and very, very rainy all this month. In fact, we have had more than half a metre (20 inches) of rain in the first 20 days of 2024. Why is this causing a swarm resurgence? 🐝 Bees die by working themselves to death in their short six weeks of life. They wear out their wings and muscles and one day don’t return to the hive. But they don’t fly when it’s raining, and as a result, they live longer, hanging out inside the hive. 🐝 However, the queen keeps laying eggs at her normal rate, and if the older bees live to eight weeks rather than six, that can increase the population by 20 to 30 thousand more than you would typically expect. Consequently, the colony can swell to bursting point, and this congestion triggers swarming. 🐝 I don’t like to split colonies to control swarming early in the season before the nectar flow because it reduces honey production significantly. But the main flow is over in most parts of our region now, so splitting might be a good option to try to hold the girls back. — © @hinterlandbees #honeybees #honeybee #honey #hive #bienenstock #bienen #bienen #biene #beewax #beeswax #beeswarm #beesofinstagram #bees🐝 #bees #beeremoval #beepollen #beepollen #beelovers #beelove #beelife #beekeeping #beekeepersofinstagram #beekeeperslife #beekeepers #beekeeperlife #beekeeper #beehive #beefarm #bee #balarısı

A swarm arrived at Reg’s compost bin at 9:30 am. He messaged me 20 minutes later to let me know that the swarm had left and only a few bees were hanging around. 🐝 I don’t think so, Reg! 🐝 After reassuring Reg that swarms are very gentle and not out to attack anyone, I encouraged him to have a peek inside the bin. “Just lift the lid by an inch or two. If the lid feels heavy, the swarm have moved in,” I told him. 🐝 Well, somehow, Reg managed to flip the lid off entirely and was instantly surrounded by a cloud of bees! It must have been quite a sight 😂 🐝 After receiving zero stings (as expected), Reg managed to get a temporary lid in place. All of the bees went back inside, and that is where this video begins… — © @hinterlandbees #beehive #bees🐝 #beekeeperlife #honeycombs #pollinator #arıcılık #عسل #🍯 #honig #bees #養蜂家 #はちみつ #sunshinecoast

The thrill of the chase is what makes these jobs exciting. 🐝 When a hive is opened up, the queen rarely stays where you expect her to. As the combs come out one by one, she keeps moving, slipping away from the action and running across the hive to the next piece of comb before you can catch a glimpse of her. 🐝 By the time you think you’re close, she has usually moved again. More often than not, I end up finding her on the very last comb. In this case, she had already abandoned that as well. — © Hinterland Bees

😭 Last day of summer … and swarm season may never look the same again. 🐝 Swarm season isn’t over yet, but from here we’ll start to see fewer calls and fewer clouds of bees hanging from branches. This year feels different though. 🐝 With Varroa spreading fast and already impacting colonies across Brisbane, it’s hard not to wonder what the next few seasons will look like. Will we still see those massive, booming swarms that signal strength and abundance? 🐝 Or are we heading into a period of smaller abscond swarms as colonies struggle under pressure? The shape of swarm season may be about to change. 🐝 What do you think the next few years will bring? — © Hinterland Bees

Chaos, stings, cracked ceiling… do you think it ended well? The ceiling cracked open with a loud snap… and the bees were NOT happy. In the scramble, I copped a few stings. 🐝 Within minutes, the energy shifted. The flight settled. And the same bees that came out firing ended up surprisingly calm. 🐝 Most people don’t realise this: bees aren’t aggressive by default. They’re defensive. Squeeze them, crush one accidentally, or trigger their alarm pheromone, and they respond. That scent tells the rest of the colony there’s a threat. 🐝 A little smoke helps mask that signal and prevents a chain reaction. In this case, I should have had my smoker closer. Lesson learned. — © Hinterland Bees

She’s here somewhere… can you see her? 🐝 Ever wondered how beekeepers find the queen bee? 🐝 To the untrained eye, it looks impossible. Tens of thousands of bees all moving at once. But the queen has a different rhythm. She walks with purpose, surrounded by subtle clues that give her away. 🐝 Once you learn what to look for, she almost reveals herself. 🐝 Check out How to Find the Queen on YouTube for the full step-by-step breakdown. There’s a Link in our profile @hinterlandbees 
© Hinterland Bees

Well, that didn’t go to plan! 🐝 Balancing on a ladder, 20,000 bees above my head, and less than an hour before sunset, what could possibly go wrong? 🐝 I had the ladder wedged precariously against a long, thin limb of the tree, with the swarm clustered right out on the very end of the branch. The whole setup felt sketchy enough, but with daylight fading fast, I had to move. 🐝 I was hoping to bring the entire swarm down in one clean move… but they couldn’t hang on. In an instant, thousands of bees dropped straight to the ground, turning a careful plan into total chaos. — © Hinterland Bees

I ripped open an armchair and found 40,000 bees inside. 🐝 This hive was only 15 days old, but the bees had already built a huge amount of honeycomb. Once a swarm finds shelter, it moves fast, producing wax, building comb, and raising brood almost immediately. 🐝 It’s a perfect example of how efficient bees are at turning any safe space into a new home. So if you ever see a few bees coming from a wall or a piece of furniture, don’t block it up. There’s usually an entire colony inside. — © Hinterland Bees

New Podcast Episode Drop | Avant Gardeners x Hinterland Bees 🐝 What actually triggers a bee swarm? And how do 50,000 bees decide where to build their next home? 🐝 Scott from Hinterland Bees breaks it all down in his guest appearance on the @avantgardeners.podcast ; from the biology of swarming to the incredible democratic process of choosing a new nest site. 🐝 He also shares how keeping bees changes the way you look at the landscape, and how it starts to shape your decisions when it comes to gardening and how you view the natural world around you. 🐝 It’s a deep dive into the secret life of bees, told by someone who’s spent decades in the thick of it. 🐝 Listen to the full episode now wherever you get your podcasts or via the link in our bio @hinterlandbees and @avantgardeners.podcast — © Avant Gardeners + Hinterland Bees

She made a run for the roof and almost got away, until I blocked every exit. 🐝 In a tricky bee removal, finding the queen is everything. And sometimes, it takes strategy, instinct, and a bit of luck. 🐝 I always try to think like a queen. She’ll head upward, away from danger, but she won’t leave the comb or expose herself. That’s my window. 🐝 This nest stretched high into the roof space, out of sight, barely reachable. If she got up there, she was as good as gone. 🐝 So I got surgical. Cleared every path she could use. And it worked. Tucked behind a slab of brood comb, right where I needed her, there she was. — © Hinterland Bees

Why would a swarm of bees build a massive 20kg nest completely out in the open? 🐝 It goes against everything we know about their instincts. Honeybees are cavity dwellers, tree hollows, wall voids, possum boxes. Dark, enclosed, protected. 🐝 So when we found this enormous open-air nest, we knew something unusual had happened. Most likely? A swarm got caught between storms and ran out of time. 🐝 If the rain keeps coming and the queen’s ready to lay, they’ll stop searching and start building, wherever they are. Even if it means hanging off a branch with no cover. 🐝 #BeeRescue #WildHoneybees #OpenAirNest #BeekeepingAustralia #HinterlandBees #BeeRemoval #SaveTheBees — © Hinterland Bees