Honey Bees

Honey bees are remarkable social insects that live in large, year-round colonies. When you encounter them on your property—whether as a swarm or an established hive—there are humane solutions that protect both you and these important pollinators.

Honey Bee Swarms

A honey bee swarm is a natural part of colony reproduction. Growing the colony to be big and healthy enough to divide and send out a swarm is a biological drive of honey bees. When honey bees swarm, the old queen and about half the worker bees leave to find a new home. Because the queen is larger than worker bees, she's not a great flyer. In order to protect her, the bees will often cluster temporarily on a tree branch, fence post, or other structure while scout bees search for a new home.

Swarms are generally calm. The bees are full of honey and focused on staying together with their queen. However, it's still wise to keep a respectful distance and avoid disturbing them.

What We Do

If you have a honey bee swarm on your property, we provide free swarm removal services in the Eugene and Springfield area. We carefully capture the swarm and relocate it to a managed hive where the colony can thrive and continue their important work as pollinators.

Call or Text (541) 854-0358

Honey Bee Hives in Structures

Sometimes honey bees establish their hive inside a wall, attic, chimney, or other structure. These established colonies are more complex to remove than swarms and require specialized skills and equipment.

We don't directly remove established hives from structures, but we can connect you with experienced beekeepers who specialize in this type of work.

Getting Help

For honey bee hive removal from walls, attics, or other structures, we recommend contacting the Lane County Beekeepers Association. They maintain a list of skilled beekeepers who can safely and humanely remove established hives.

These removals typically involve cutting into the structure to access the hive, removing the bees and comb, and making repairs. Professional removal ensures the bees are relocated alive and that attractants (like honey and wax) are properly cleaned up to prevent future colonies from moving in.

About Honey Bees

Not Native, But Important

Honey bees (Apis mellifera) are not native to North America—they were brought here by European colonists in the 1600s. Despite being introduced, they've become important managed pollinators for agriculture, especially for crops that require massive pollination efforts like almonds, apples, and berries.

Honey bees and people have a long history together. Beekeeping has been practiced for thousands of years, with evidence of keeping bee for honey harvesting dating back to ancient Egypt and Hittite cultures. The relationship between humans and honey bees has evolved over time, from simple honey gathering to sophisticated hive management and breeding.

Learn more about the history of keeping honey bees

Colony Organization

A honey bee colony functions like a superorganism—thousands of individual bees acting less like separate insects and more like parts of one living whole. In a healthy colony, the queen is the primary egg-layer, capable of laying up to about 2,000 eggs per day during the busiest part of the season. The female worker bees play many roles in the hive. They clean cells, feed larvae, tend to the queen, build wax comb, help regulate hive temperature, guard the entrance, and eventually forage for nectar, pollen, water, and plant resins.

Male honey bees, called drones, have different roles in the colony. They help exchange food, respond to hive signals, and contribute to heat production in the brood nest. Drones also spread the colony’s genetics by mating with new queens from other colonies.

Honey bees have a remarkably rich communication system that includes pheromones, food-sharing, vibration signals, and the famous waggle dance, which helps foragers tell their sisters where to forage for resources.

This sophisticated social structure allows colonies to grow quite large and persist from one year to another. This makes honey bees excellent pollinators and allows them to maintain their hives through cold winters by clustering and generating heat collectively.

Honey Bee Health

A deeper look at the pathogens, parasites, and diseases that affect honey bees in the western United States — with signs, treatment options, and practical management guidance.

Explore Honey Bee Health

Honey Bee Resources

~ Books and Publications ~

Backyard Beekeeping cover

Backyard Beekeeping by Kim Flottum

This is a great introduction to beekeeping book. Whether you are just getting started or want a book that covers all of the basics, this is the book to read.

Beekeepers Handbook cover

The Beekeeper's Handbook by Diana Sammataro

A more advanced beekeeping book. This is the book recommended for the Oregon State Master Beekeeping program.

Honey Bee Biology cover

Honey Bee Biology and Beekeeping by Caron & Conner

For a truly deep dive into honey bees, this is the book that covers it all.

~ Podcasts ~

Two Bees in a Podcast

Honey Bee Obscura

BeeKeeping Today

BeeKeeping Today has a four-part series on how to get started with bees beginning at Season 2 episode 16.

~ Websites ~

Oregon State Beekeepers Association

Lane County Beekeepers Association

Oregon State Master Beekeepers

~ Honey Bee Health ~

Mushroom Extracts for Honey bees

This paper published by Washington State University describes how they were able to dramatically lower viral loads in honey bee colonies using a 1% mushroom extract fed to their bees in a sugar water solution.

Honey bee pheromones

Honey bees rely heavily on chemical signals called pheromones to coordinate colony life. The queen produces pheromones that suppress the development of other queens and signal her presence to workers. Alarm pheromones alert guard bees to threats at the hive entrance. Foragers use pheromones to mark flowers they have already visited, and workers use them to help guide swarms to new nest sites. Pheromones are one of the primary ways the colony acts as a coordinated whole rather than thousands of separate individuals.

Waggle dance

The waggle dance is a figure-eight movement performed by forager bees inside the hive to communicate the direction and distance of a food source to their nestmates. The angle of the straight run relative to vertical corresponds to the angle of the food source relative to the sun, and the duration of the waggle run indicates distance. First described in detail by Karl von Frisch, who received a Nobel Prize for the work in 1973, the waggle dance remains one of the most sophisticated non-human communication systems known.

Generating heat collectively

Honey bee colonies survive winter by forming a tight cluster and generating metabolic heat together. Worker bees vibrate their flight muscles without moving their wings, producing warmth that keeps the cluster core around 80–95°F (27–35°C) even when outside temperatures drop well below freezing. The bees on the outer shell of the cluster insulate the interior, and bees rotate between the warm center and the cooler edges over time. This collective thermoregulation is one of the key adaptations that allows honey bee colonies to persist through cold winters rather than dying back like most other bee species.

Brood nest

The brood nest is the central area of the hive where the queen lays eggs and developing bees—eggs, larvae, and pupae—are raised. Worker bees keep the brood nest at a very stable temperature, typically around 93–95°F (34–35°C), regardless of outside conditions. The brood nest is surrounded by bands of pollen for larval food, with honey stored in the upper and outer frames. Beekeepers pay close attention to the brood nest during hive inspections as its condition reflects the overall health of the colony.