Why Swarmcell, what does it mean?

Swarmcell is the name of my 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.