06/16/2025
Last week, the bee hive in the Sunset Zoo gift shop began to swarm. This is because honeybees usually live in big boxes with 16 or more frames. These frames hold wax where bees store food and raise baby bees. In our gift shop, we have a smaller hive with only 4 frames. This smaller hive helps visitors see the bees better and still lets the bees go outside.
Because the hive is small, it can get crowded—especially in warm weather when lots of flowers are blooming. Yesterday, some bees gathered outside the hive to make more room. Inside, the bees started making queen cells to get ready to swarm. When bees swarm, the queen and about half of the bees leave to find a new home.
To help, the zoo bee team moved the queen and half the bees to a new hive. This is like a pretend swarm. The bees that stayed behind will raise a new queen and now have more space. In spring and summer, the beekeepers usually move some bees once a month to keep the hive healthy and happy.
The video shows Nikki Bowman from Nikki's Bee Farm collecting members of the hive for relocation.
