During the swarming period the colony should preferably be inspected once a week. Each honeycomb is pulled out and checked. The garden beekeeper assesses the welfare of the bees. He verifies, for example, whether the queen is still there and whether she is diligently nesting (laying eggs), and whether there are signs that the colony wants to divide and swarm, which should be prevented if necessary.

Finding the queen sometimes takes quite a long time. Who finds her in the photo?

Impressive is, how fast the bees "extend" the wax foundations, i.e. the indicated cells on both sides up to their full width of approx. 2.5 cm, in order to use them afterwards either as brood cells, or to store honey and pollen.