About Swarmcell

We are always buying chapstick so we figured we would make our own. Because we didn’t know what we were doing we had no fear. It took a lot of trial and error but we eventually landed on a recipe that we liked. Again our neighbors, friends, family and co-workers loved getting free beeswax lip balm. Making even small batches left us with lots of extra. The next logical step was to sell our lip balm online, and here we are. But why name it Swarmcell Beeswax Lip Balms? Thats is a very odd name for a lip balm company, isn’t it? Well, there is a good story behind why I am calling it that.

Why call it “SwarmCell”?

Swarmcell is the name of our company and it comes from a very special structure within a honey beehive. We like to think of ourselves as the Queen of Beeswax Lip Balm (that will make sense later). I started keeping bees when they wouldn’t leave my house alone. Making beeswax lip balm was just an extension of that.

A beehive is typically made up of about 10,000 bees, mostly female. The male bees are strictly for defense and for mating with the queen, once, then dropping dead.

When a beehive is doing well their numbers will grow and grow. Soon there are too many bees for the hive. A beekeeper can add more boxes to the hive, giving them more room. But sometimes even that isn’t enough.

When a beehive out-grows it’s home they will swarm. This means half the hive will leave and look for new digs. But first they need a new queen.

Make Your Own Queen

Queen bees can be made by the hive. Worker bees will heavily feed a select larva royal jelly. This heavy diet of the protein-rich secretion (from glands on the heads of the young worker bees) causes the larva to develop into a sexually mature female.

Because a queen bee is much larger than a worker, or drone bee, the cell the larva is deposited into must be larger. Therefore the worker bees must build a much larger cell. These cells will not fit within the normal geometric honey comb structure. They will stick out and are easy to spot.

When beekeepers see that a hive is building these super-large cells they know it is a sign that the hive is looking to swarm. That is where the name comes from. Swarm cells are a sign the hive is growing a queen and planing on swarming.

We Are Growing - Swarmcell!

Like the growing beehive we are ready to breakout. It is our Swarmcell time! I have been making my lip balm for a long time. But now is the time to expand and offer it to everyone. Like the swarm of bees I am moving out into the world.

I hope we will find a place in the vast world of lip balms and beeswax products. I find working with bees and making lip balm to be very rewarding. My deepest wish is that people will enjoy using my products as much as I enjoyed creating them.