How did our most popular swarm of 2023 fair through this year?
In June 2023, Manchester Honey Company collected a swarm of bees from underneath a table at Idle Hands Coffee, and the pictures were all over the news. But what has happened to that colony of bees since then?
The colony was put in a cedar hive box and moved to a beautiful apiary surrounded by trees and wildflowers in Stretford, on the banks of the River Mersey.

It had a lovely, strong queen, and while the bees foraged for nectar and pollen and created new wax honeycomb in the hive, she started laying eggs to grow the colony. The numbers grew quickly, and by mid-August, the colony had over 50,000 bees. They collected nectar during the warm summer days and dehydrated it to store as honey. By late September, there was only Himalayan balsam and ivy to forage on, and the temperatures were getting colder. As the summer bees started to die off, the winter bees were just emerging. The winter bees were fluffier and fatter, and they would survive the whole winter, rather than just six weeks like the summer bees.
The colony had built up plenty of stores and went into winter strongly, with little idea how tough the winter was going to be.
We insulated the hive so they didn’t have to use as much energy to keep their environment warm, but it was cold and wet, so they didn’t get many opportunities to get out until March. They came out of winter happily, and we saw the winter bees flying in circles to orientate themselves and do their cleaning flights (bee poo). But they only managed a few days out, and the cold, wet spring meant that plants didn’t develop properly and didn’t flower much. Those that did flower barely produced any nectar due to the cold temperatures
There was no nectar for the bees, and by May, beekeeping associations were sharing starvation warnings for bees around the country. The Idle Hands bees had stores of honey, so we decided to wait for the weather to improve. By mid-June, all stores had run out, and the weather still hadn’t improved. We didn’t want to feed them refined sugar, and the forecast was for better weather in three days. So we gambled and waited, and just like that, everything changed—flowers opened, the temperature rose above 16 degrees every day, and nectar started flowing.

When we inspected them during the summer, they had lovely temperaments. They were calm and not rushing up to defend their hive. They calmly carried on with their normal activities as we lifted them out to inspect for health and possible swarming signs.
By early July, we couldn’t get boxes on fast enough to give them more space to store nectar and honey. They were creating wax, and the queen was laying eggs quickly.
They were inspected by the bee inspector in September and given a clean bill of health.
They had produced so much honey that we took off around 40 jars from this colony, leaving about 40 jars’ worth for them to use over winter.
Right now in mid October they have begun laying their winter bees again and we are hoping for a much easier spring for them next year.
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If you'd like to try some of the honey that the Idle Hands bees created, head over to our shop and select out M32 Honey before it's all gone!
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