Kent Beekeepers

In densely populated London, it is not unusual to find beekeepers tending hives on rented sections of community garden plots, known locally as allotments. During a visit this May, I had the opportunity to explore the main apiary of the Bromley Beekeepers, located in the Sydenham area of southeast London.
Having visited many allotments over the years, I was surprised by the scale and energy of this site. The annual allotment open day felt more like a community festival than a gardening event. Visitors enjoyed craft and beverage vendors, live music, food sales (tea and cake) from the clubhouse, and sunny spring weather alongside hundreds of gardening enthusiasts and local residents.
One of the highlights of my visit was meeting several members of the bee club, including Lottie Simpson, creator of a remarkable mud-covered skep. The skep features a carved wooden mask inspired by bee anatomy, and a recently installed swarm has adopted the sculpture as its home, using the mask’s eye openings as entrances and exits. 

The Bromley Beekeepers organization offers members a range of benefits, including two national monthly magazine subscriptions and liability insurance. The visit offered a fascinating glimpse into London's thriving beekeeping community and highlighted the important role that allotments play—not only as spaces for gardening, but also as hubs for education, conservation, and community engagement.

My broader impression from observing pollinators in southern England is that the region appears to support a greater diversity of bumblebee species than I commonly encounter around Atlanta, Georgia. At first glance, this may seem surprising, since the southeastern United States is generally known for its rich biodiversity. However, bumblebees are particularly well adapted to temperate and cooler climates, making the United Kingdom an ideal environment for many species. While Georgia boasts an impressive diversity of bees, much of that richness comes from groups other than bumblebees, including solitary bees, sweat bees, leafcutter bees, carpenter bees, and numerous other native species. In fact, carpenter bees can easily be mistaken for bumblebees at first glance, as the two share a similar size and appearance, despite belonging to different groups.
Carpenter bees can look very similar to bumblebees at first glance.  Key differences 

Feature	Bumblebees	Carpenter bees
Social behavior	Usually social, living in colonies with a queen and workers	Mostly solitary (each female makes her own nest)
Nesting	Underground, in grass tussocks, compost heaps, cavities, etc.	Bore tunnels into wood, bamboo, dead stems, or similar materials
Abdomen appearance	Usually hairy/fuzzy all over	Often has a shiny, hairless black abdomen (especially large carpenter bees)
Colony size	Can range from dozens to hundreds of bees	Usually a single female or a small family group
Genus	Bombus	Xylocopa (large carpenter bees)
		Ceratina (small carpenter bees)

3 feet or 3 miles -- oversimplification

One of the most repeated maxims in beekeeping is the advice on moving hives: “Move them either 3 feet or 3 miles.” It’s simple, memorable… and, in my experience, not quite the full story.

This spring, two of my four hanging swarm traps successfully attracted swarms.

Swarm #1: The Neighbor’s Backyard Adventure
On March 22, a swarm chose a trap hung on a tree limb in a neighbor’s backyard. After letting them settle in for a couple of days, I lowered the trap to a more stable, level position. These traps held five deep, foundation-less frames, so keeping things level was important. My backyard hive stand is only about 540 feet away—far too close for a direct move without causing confusion among returning foragers—ask me how I know.

Using the MABA Bee Neighbor List, I found a fellow club member just over a mile away who was willing to host my temporary relocation. After dusk—bees safely inside—the trap rode shotgun (literally, balanced on my knees while my spouse drove) to its temporary home.

Five days later, I brought the trap back to my backyard hive stand, where it stayed another four days before I finally transferred the frames into a proper nuc box. The bees handled it beautifully.

Swarm #2: A Backyard Puzzle

The second swarm, on April 13, selected my backyard hanging swarm trap—just 50 feet from where I ultimately wanted them.

This time, instead of a long-distance detour, I moved the trap in 10 foot steps. Each move was planned carefully: I leveled the next location the night before, then moved the trap at dawn.

In total, it took five intermediate moves to reach the final hive stand.

What I observed was fascinating: a 10-foot move caused only minor confusion among the bees, and they seemed to reorient themselves within about four hours. No chaos, no mass disorientation—just a brief adjustment period.

Rethinking “3 Feet or 3 Miles”

After these experiences, I’m not convinced the classic maxim tells the whole story. It’s a helpful guideline, sure—but real-world conditions offer more flexibility than it suggests.

If I had to rewrite it based on what I’ve seen, it might sound more like:

“Move them less than 10 feet… or at least a mile away.”

Not quite as catchy—but perhaps a bit closer to reality.

tulip poplar windfall and phenology '26

Spring seems to be arriving a bit early this year—at least in my Atlanta backyard. My records show the first tulip poplar flower windfall appeared on day 84, about 13 days earlier than expected. It’s a small but telling sign that the season is shifting ahead of schedule.

To put this in perspective, I compared my observations with broader indicators like the National Phenology Network’s Spring Bloom Index. This model, based on flowering plants like lilacs and honeysuckles and seasonal temperature patterns, shows that the 2026 spring in Georgia’s Piedmont region is running a few days early compared to the 30-year average.

In other words, what I’m seeing locally matches the bigger picture—spring is getting a head start.

Other Atlanta nectar sources at this time (not shown):

• Chinese Wysteria (invasive)
  
• White Clover
• Spiderwort
• Amur Honeysuckle (invasive)
• Dandelion 

 

1st Tulip Poplar Windfall	Day of Year
10-Apr-2011	100
27-Mar-2012	87
19-Apr-2013	109
12-Apr-2015	102
15-Apr-2017	105
5-Apr-2018	95
11-Apr-2019	101
7-Apr-2021	97
6-Apr-2022	96
24-Mar-2023	83
6-Apr-2024	97
3-Apr-2025	93
25-Mar-2026	84
median	97

15 Minutes of Bee Flight

  

Growing Degree Days

According to Growing Degree Days (GDD), accumulated heat levels in Atlanta are already brushing up against historic highs. You can see it everywhere: trees leafing out, stone fruit bursting into bloom, and pollinators getting a head start on their busiest season. In my neighborhood, bees are making the rounds—crabapple, ornamental cherry, holly, even the occasional dandelion are all part of the early buffet.  Dave Marshall, our swarm commander, received our first swarm call on March 3rd.

15 Minutes of Bee Flight

Back in 2012, NASA coined the unforgettable phrase “Seven Minutes of Terror” to describe the landing of the Curiosity Rover on Mars. It captured a brief, intense, high-stakes moment. I found myself thinking about that on Sunday, March 15, when my own backyard delivered a headline-worthy event: “15 Minutes of Bee Flight.”  At 11 a.m., under warm sun and blue skies, my five-frame hive swarmed.

If you’ve never seen a swarm in motion, it’s easy to miss—or misunderstand. From a distance, it’s just a buzzing cloud. Are they leaving? Arriving? It’s impossible to tell. But when you focus—really focus—on the landing board, the story sharpens. In my case, it looked like a moving walkway, a steady stream of bees flowing outward. The old queen and roughly half of the workers and honey are gone!     

I managed to capture it on my iPhone, a small victory considering how fleeting these moments are. Within minutes, the airborne cloud settled high in a Leyland Cypress tree—far too high to reach. So I did what any beekeeper would do in that situation: grabbed binoculars, stared upward, and chatted with a neighbor about the spectacle.

By the next morning, the story had changed.

I was out at dawn, scanning for the swarm. The good news: they had moved on. The bad news: the temperature had dropped hard overnight. On the neighbor’s driveway lay the aftermath—hundreds upon hundreds of dead bees, casualties of the cold. Maybe a thousand in total. Not nearly enough to represent the full swarm, but enough to tell a sobering story.

These were the bees that formed the outer shell, sacrificing themselves to give the colony a chance to survive. It’s a stark reminder of how collective survival works in a hive—individual loss in service of the whole. My neighbors, wonderfully kind about the whole thing, even asked if I wanted to hold a proper ceremony for the fallen. 

In Summary

And that’s the thing about beekeeping, especially in a year like this. 

What begins as a perfectly timed departure—a warm, sunny launch into the promise of spring—can collide almost immediately with the unpredictability of nature. A brilliant plan meets a sudden freeze. It’s hard not to view it through a human lens, to look for logic or fairness in it. But the bees don’t operate that way. They respond, adapt, endure—or don’t.

Climate Prediction 2026

Brood Break Observations in Two Backyard Hives

8-Frame Hive:
This colony experienced a brief brood break from October 19 to November 19, 2025, but showed no noticeable response to the January 10, 2026 cold snap. In fact, a few drones were spotted on February 8. Overall, the colony’s behavior resembles an early spring buildup more than typical winter activity.
5-Frame Hive:
In contrast, the 5-frame colony slowly responded to the January 10 cold spell with an additional brood break. It has recently begun raising internal temperatures back into the brood range of 92°F–98°F, signaling renewed brood rearing. 

Understanding the BroodMinder Graph
The 5-frame hive graph includes three temperature curves:

• Raspberry curve: Temperature at the top of the lower box
• Purple curve: Temperature at the top of the second box, just beneath the inner cover. 
• Red curve: Outdoor temperature from a third-party source

At present, the purple curve remains below brood-zone temperatures, indicating no brood in the upper box. Meanwhile, the raspberry curve has climbed back toward brood-range temperatures following the most recent brood break.

Understanding the Growing Degree Days (GDD) Graph
The smooth brown line represents the multi-decade average of Atlanta’s Growing Degree Day (GDD) accumulation. GDD measures accumulated heat units and can seem abstract at first.
The jagged green line shows the current 2026 GDD. Prior to January 10, it tracked above the brown average line, reflecting warmer-than-normal temperatures. After January 10, the flat section of the green line indicates temperatures below 50°F. At present, the 2026 GDD has returned to near-average levels. In my swarm-obsessed view, average GDD values suggest a typical start to the Atlanta swarm season.

What’s Next?
The outlook from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration offers limited hope for drought relief. For Atlanta, a modest chance of warmer and drier conditions could support foraging activity.  There is always a gray area between long-term climate outlooks and short-term weekly forecasts, so patience will be essential as the 2026 bee season unfolds.
February and March are likely to bring swings between unseasonably warm spells and freezing conditions. During cold, damp, overcast days with no flight activity, it can be unsettling not knowing what’s happening inside the hive. Fortunately, BroodMinder temperature loggers continue to provide valuable insight and reassurance. Stay tuned for further updates as we follow how these colonies navigate an unpredictable winter.

winter survival improved by about 22% in covered hives

 

Earlier this month, I found myself questioning the results from Google Scholar while researching winter hive insulation. So I changed tactics and turned to PubMed, using the search terms insulation AND hive AND bee. Sorry, Google—but PubMed delivered a shorter, and far more useful list of journal articles.

One study in particular caught my attention: “Honey bee hive covers reduce food consumption and colony mortality during overwintering.” The research offers practical, data-backed insights that are especially relevant for beekeepers preparing colonies for winter.

The study examined full-size, 10-frame hives during the 2020 winter season in central Illinois. About half of the colonies (22 hives) were wrapped for winter, while the remaining 21 were left uncovered. To reduce location bias, the researchers distributed the hives across eight different apiaries, with roughly five to six hives per yard.

For the wrapped hives, the researchers used 4-mm-thick black corrugated polypropylene plastic sheets to cover the sides. On top of the inner cover, they added 1.5-inch (3.81 cm) foam insulation board (Owens Corning Foamular 250, rated R-7.5). To manage moisture and reduce condensation inside the hive, top entrance holes were cut into each wrap. 

The results were compelling. When paired with good overall winter preparation, insulated hives consumed less of their stored food and showed significantly better survival rates. In fact, winter survival improved by about 22% in covered hives compared to uncovered ones. 

Takeaway: If winter insulation is part of your beekeeping plans, this study strongly suggests it’s worth considering. And while the researchers used relatively modest materials, today’s beekeepers can find commercial insulation options with much higher R-values than the corrugated plastic sheets used in this experiment—potentially offering even greater benefits during overwintering.

5-frame tower - Brood Temperature

Preparing for Winter

On October 25, 2025, I insulated the hives using a Bee Cozy, added solid foam insulation above the hive, and placed an overhead projector sheet beneath the inner cover to reduce warm air circulation. I maintain two backyard hives—one 8-frame and one 5-frame—both equipped with BroodMinder temperature loggers.

Brood Break Observations

• 8-Frame Hive: Experienced a short brood break from October 19 to November 19, 2025.
• 5-Frame Hive: Recently began climbing toward the brood zone temperature range of 92°F to 98°F. Initially, I projected it would reach this range within a week based on a linear trend. However, the January warm-up accelerated the process: after bees started foraging for water and outdoor temperatures stayed above 57°F for 24 hours, the hive quickly responded and achieved brood-zone temperature by midday on January 7, 2026.

Nature also responded to the warm spell, with winter-flowering ornamental cherry trees and mahonia beginning to bloom.

Understanding the Graph

The graph for the 5-frame hive displays three curves:

1. Raspberry curve – temperature at the top of the lower box.
2. Purple curve – temperature at the top of the second box, just below the inner cover.
3. Red curve – outdoor temperature from a third-party source.

Currently, the purple curve remains below brood-zone temperatures, suggesting no brood in the upper box, while the raspberry curve has maintained brood-zone temperatures despite the recent outdoor temperature drop.

What’s Next?

January and February will likely bring alternating periods of unseasonably warm and freezing weather. The brood may or may not move into the upper box. On cold, wet, overcast days with no flight activity, not knowing what’s happening inside the hive can be nerve-wracking—but the temperature loggers provide reassuring insights.

Stay tuned for more updates as we monitor how these hives adapt to the unpredictable winter conditions!