🗓️ The Beekeeper's Year

About this simulation

A honeybee colony isn't a fixed thing — it's a population that swells from a shrunken winter cluster of a few thousand bees to a bursting summer hive of fifty thousand or more, then contracts again before the cold. This lab lets you scrub through a full calendar year on one cutaway hive and watch population, honey stores, swarm risk and Varroa mite load all move together, the way they do in a real apiary.

How it works

• Spring — the queen ramps up egg-laying, population explodes, and a congested hive raises swarm cells; roughly half the bees can leave with the old queen if nothing is done.
• Summer — population peaks and foragers pour out to the "honey flow", filling frames with capped honey faster than it's used.
• Autumn — growth stops, stores are checked, and Varroa mites (which built up all summer inside brood cells) are knocked down with a treatment before the colony shrinks into winter.
• Winter — the colony pulls into a tight, heat-conserving cluster and slowly eats through its honey stores until spring.

Controls

• Month of the year — scrub continuously through the twelve-month cycle; the calendar dial behind the hive tracks the same point.
• Swarm prevention — when on, the beekeeper splits congested colonies in spring instead of losing half the bees to a swarm.
• Autumn Varroa treatment — when on, mite counts are knocked back down in September; when off, they keep climbing into winter.
• Auto-advance — animates the month slider on a loop so you can watch the whole year play out. Drag to rotate, scroll to zoom.

Did you know?

A single strong colony can hold over 50,000 bees at its summer peak, then shrink to under 10,000 for winter — the same queen and genetics, just a completely different-sized population depending on the month.