If you asked Bob Reed in late April how many beehives he had in the Lewistown Valley, he would have told you 11.

Early May, and the Tamaqua beekeeper’s answer would have been 13.

And by mid-May, Reed had added another to make it 14.

Each recent addition originated with a swarm — or a clutch of thousands of honeybees that exit their colony because of overcrowding or other issues.

A beekeeper for 16 years, Reed is no stranger to swarms.

But what happened this spring in Mahanoy City caught the seasoned “bee guy” off guard.

A honeybee swarm ditched a hive hidden within the walls of a Mahanoy Street house and made its way onto a nearby church. A week later, Reed said another swarm made its way from the same place.

“It is very unusual to get two swarms a week apart from the same bee colony,” Reed said.

He was there for the swarms both times, bringing premade hive boxes in an attempt to “re-home” the bees. He knocked the largest parts of the swarms into the boxes, and the remainder eventually flocked to join them.

“I gave them a furnished apartment,” Reed said of the hive boxes. “I gave them food — their refrigerator was full with two jars of (sugary) syrup on top.”

The shelter and the food gave the bees a head start as they go about expanding their colonies.

And it worked for Reed, who relocated the bees to gradual slopes of land in the Lewistown Valley, a largely agricultural area. The honeybees help to pollinate farmers’ crops, and Reed will eventually be able to glean honey from their hives.

It’s a spot where he’s been tending to bees for a number of years.

Calming smoke

He recently checked on the “new” honeybees.

Before he got to work, Reed pulled on a lightweight jacket with a mesh covering for his face. It’s meant to protect from bee stings.

He then picked up a handheld smoker that simmered wood chips inside. The puffs of smoke emitted calm honeybees and make hive inspections safer for the beekeeper.

“You always want to use a cool smoke when you’re smoking. Otherwise, you can burn the wings of the bees,” Reed cautioned.

With a few pushes on the device’s bellows, Reed delivered a fragrant smoke to the hives.

The bees didn’t seem to notice Reed, and went about their duties.

“Some can be feisty but most are laid back,” he said.

Queen, workers

Each of the hives depends upon a single queen bee, which mates just once with multiple male drone bees to produce around 2,000 eggs daily.

“She can live three years, she can live two years or she can last a couple months,” Reed said.

Worker bees — all females — make the hexagonal “comb” found in the hive from a special wax they produce. The honeycomb will house eggs and larvae, and be used for honey and pollen storage.

The workers feed the bee larvae and care for the queen. They also regulate the temperature in the hives by fanning their wings. In their short lifespan of about four weeks, they’ll eventually become foragers, and leave the hive to gather and return with water, nectar and pollen.

Each hive can have thousands upon thousands of bees, with new ones emerging as older ones pass on.

“Hey, girls. I’m coming in to check on you,” Reed says as he approaches a hive. “I do talk to them. And they do recognize you, believe it or not.”

He lifts off a lid from a box to reveal a series of wooden frames on which the bees have built tidy rows of honeycomb.

“You see all that brown stuff? That is brood. Those are baby bees sealed in a cell,” Reed said. “It’s a viable hive.”

He inspects the hive to find the queen, identified by her longer abdomen.

He then points to another bee.

“This one is bringing pollen in,” Reed said of the yellow on the bee’s legs. “That’s what we call bee bread. They mix it with enzymes in their mouth and body and feed it to the brood, the baby bees. They’ll travel up to 3 miles for pollen.”

As for honey, it starts as nectar from flowers. As its processed by bees, it’s stored in honeycomb to feed the babies.

Bees typically produces more honey than what is needed for the hive — and that’s when Reed harvests it.

Depending on his yield, he sells the honey from Leiby’s Farm Market, 1026 Catawissa Road, in the Lewistown Valley.

Dark spaces

It was Reed’s wife, Cindy, who originally wanted to start keeping bees. The couple attended classes at the Capital Area Beekeepers Association near Harrisburg, and Cindy absorbed herself in beekeeping literature.

The couple eventually began caring for a hive in the Barnesville area.

“Unfortunately, she got stung one too many times and ended up in the emergency room,” Reed said.

Cindy has stepped back from beekeeping as a result, but Reed continues.

While two of Reed’s “new” hives originated in Mahanoy City, the third one was a swarm that he recently retrieved from a tree in New Ringgold.

Reed noted that colonies will produce a new queen “cell,” which will develop into a queen bee when the original queen is weakening. They can also make a “swarm cell,” or a new queen, when the hive is becoming too crowded.

Before any new queens emerge, the existing queen and half of the bees in the colony will leave the hive in search of another home.

That’s likely what happened to cause the recent swarms, Reed said.

In nature, he said, bees look for hollow trees, logs or rock crevices to call home.

They prefer dark, enclosed — and hidden — spaces, and can find them almost anywhere.

“They’ll go anywhere that has a 3/8-inch opening,” Reed explained. “I’ve already seen them in water tanks. One year I pulled one out of a spool of electrical wire. They’re opportunists. If they find a place where they think they can make a home, they will move in. They can go behind the siding of your house, or make a home in the eaves of a house.”

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, honeybees are a critical link in agricultural production. Beekeepers like Reed help with it.

“Pollination by managed honey bee colonies adds at least $18 billion to the value of U.S. agriculture annually through increased yields and superior-quality harvest,” the USDA says.