The formation of a new hive begins with swarming, a biological event where an existing, mature colony reproduces. This process transitions a vulnerable cluster of bees into a fully established home through a chronological series of steps.
The Swarm: The Colony’s Reproductive Act
Swarming is the natural means by which a honey bee colony splits to create a new one, typically occurring in the spring or early summer when resources are abundant. Worker bees construct several specialized queen cells, and the existing queen lays eggs into them to raise her successor.
Workers prepare the old queen for flight by significantly reducing her food intake, causing her to lose up to half of her body weight. This weight loss is necessary because a queen is normally too heavy to fly long distances. Just before the new queens emerge, the old queen departs with roughly half of the colony’s worker bees, leaving the remaining bees and developing queens to continue the original hive.
Upon leaving the parent hive, the swarm flies a short distance before clustering temporarily on a fixed object, such as a tree branch. This temporary cluster, known as a bivouac, serves as a staging area for a few hours or up to three days while specialized individuals search for a permanent home.
Scouting and New Home Selection
While the main cluster hangs motionless, a few hundred of the colony’s oldest and most experienced individuals, known as scout bees, fly out to find a suitable cavity. They look for a cavity with a volume greater than 10 liters, an entrance hole smaller than 30 square centimeters, and a location several meters off the ground for protection.
When a scout returns after finding a location, she communicates the site’s quality, distance, and direction using the waggle dance on the surface of the clustered swarm. The better the site, the longer and more vigorous the scout’s dance will be, which recruits other uncommitted scouts to investigate.
Multiple scouts may advertise different sites simultaneously, creating a kind of “popularity contest” on the surface of the cluster. As scouts visit and confirm a site’s quality, they begin dancing for it as well, creating a positive feedback loop. A consensus is reached when a sufficient number of scouts, known as a quorum, are present at the most favored site.
Once the quorum is reached, the scouts start producing a vibration signal, known as worker piping, which signals the entire swarm to prepare for takeoff. The clustered bees warm their flight muscles to about 95 degrees Fahrenheit. The entire swarm then lifts off and flies directly to the chosen location, guided by the informed scouts.
Initial Construction and Establishment of the Brood
Upon arrival at the new cavity, the bees immediately begin construction, as they have no pre-built comb for shelter or reproduction. Workers engorged themselves with honey before leaving the parent hive, metabolizing this stored sugar to synthesize wax. Beeswax is secreted as tiny scales from eight specialized glands on the worker bees’ abdomens.
Young worker bees collect these wax scales, chew them, and mold them into the hexagonal cells that form the honeycomb. This building effort is rapid and resource-intensive; a young swarm can build a significant amount of comb within a few days. It takes approximately six to eight kilograms of honey consumed to produce a single kilogram of wax.
The new queen’s first and most important task is to establish the brood nest by laying eggs into the newly constructed cells. The comb is built around this central brood area, which the workers maintain at a consistent temperature. Other new cells are built around the brood nest for the immediate storage of incoming nectar and pollen, which are essential to feed the first generation of young.
Transition to a Mature Colony
The initial phase ends when the first generation of new workers, called the pioneer brood, begins to emerge. This marks the transition from a vulnerable, newly established nest to a growing colony, as the population increases exponentially, driven by the queen’s accelerating rate of egg-laying.
The colony’s focus shifts to building sufficient wax comb and gathering enough resources to survive the first major resource shortage, such as winter or a dry season. The ability to stockpile honey and pollen reserves is important for long-term viability. The colony is considered fully “started” and self-sustaining once it has established a robust population and adequate stores to endure its first major period of scarcity.