When bees from a beehive that grew in the wall of a home in Palmwoods on the Sunshine Coast started finding their way to the interior of the house, that’s when we got the call to remove it.

This hive had been present for about six months, moving in at the beginning of the 2018 swarming season in early spring. They had been able to expand rapidly because they had a great season with plenty of nectar and pollen readily available. They were experiencing another great nectar flow from the local Teatrees that had recently started flowering.

The hive not only had some beautiful new lily-white comb full of nectar it also was packed with fresh pollen. It is this pollen that provides the protein source for the hive which is essential to produce the food to feed the developing larvae. As a consequence, masses of pollen triggers the queen into laying overdrive which into turn leads to a population explosion in the nest.

A population increase combined with plenty of resources could have led this colony to swarm, even on the verge of winter, but these bees had already found a passage into the next stud-space in the wall which would have provided them with plenty of extra space to expand their nest. I guess that they would have waited for spring to swarm due to this extra space.