A guild member holding a hive frame with honey along the sides and bottom. (Photo: Deesarine Ballayan)

On Saturday, June 20, the Philadelphia Beekeepers Guild hosted an Urban Beekeeping session at the Awbury Arboretum. This session was the second apiary session for the 2026 spring class. 

The Guild hosts these sessions and preliminary lectures to make people aware of the commitment it takes to own bees. Currently, Guild members say there are 17 hives, manmade structures that host bees, at Awbury.

“People think they can just buy bees and then, when they’re tired of taking care of them, release them because it seems ‘natural,’ but it’s not,” said Jeff Eckel, a founding member of the Guild. “It can be very harmful.”

Eckel currently manages bees at the Wyck House for Carversville Farm. Prior to this, he was an apiary inspector for the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, where he inspected apiaries for six counties, including Philadelphia. Apiaries are places where one or more colonies of bees are kept. 

Eckel says many Americans are “anti-government” and will get bees without registering them with the state. When hives go uninspected by the state, they can become infected with bacteria like American Foulbrood. Eventually, contamination can spread to other non-infected bees, causing even larger collapses in bee colonies.

“There’s about twice as many unregistered hives as there are registered,” Eckel said. “And the state won’t really know unless they become registered or someone tips them off.”

Eckel says that in order for one to have their own registered hive, they must have removable frames that allow the state to inspect for bacteria, mites, and disease. 

Many members of the guild insist that a good relationship between bees and humans should be mutually beneficial. Typically, bees produce more honey than they need because they are accounting for natural predators.

“We, as humans, protect them from natural predators like bears, mice, and raccoons, and in return they produce a lot of honey for us,” said Aleicia Phulwani, the Guild’s Vice President. 

To increase accessibility, all urban beekeeping sessions through the guild have a corresponding session in South Philly at Guild member Mark Berman’s apiary.

Although one can own bees in a more dense area of the city, like Point Breeze or Powelton Village, a bee colony will typically be stronger in a place with more vegetation, making Philly’s Northwest region the perfect setting. 

Guild members claim that, although bees can fly up to a three-mile radius from the hive, the further a bee has to travel for nectar to feed its colony, the more dangerous it is for them. 

“Having bees on the farm can also make for better plants and makes the place greener,” said David Harrod, founding Guild member and Saturday’s session leader. 

Saturday’s session was also to teach beginner beekeepers how to avoid swarms, when a single bee colony splits into two. 

The new colony will form a nest nearby. This can be harmful in urban beekeeping because bees can move from their hive in a person’s backyard to their neighbor’s home. 

Early guild member Norris Childs’ beekeeping began in 1981, decades before the Guild’s founding. 

That year, a friend of Childs asked if he wanted bees because they had congregated on her roof. 

Childs says he knew that having bees would be easier for him because his only neighbor was the Chestnut Hill West Station, so he figured he wouldn’t really be bothering anyone. And thus, he started his very own apiary.

“Bees are really smart and already know what they need to do,” said Childs. “Even when I went away on deployment or worked long shifts, they still knew what to do. I just fed them sugar water in the winter and extracted their honey.” 

Swarming also weakens the initial colony because the bees take a significant number of workers and food. The Guild says harvesting honey regularly gives the bees space in their hive and less incentive to swarm. 

Bees will typically start leaving the hive more; there will be less storage for food in the hive, and the queen will start laying more eggs when bees are about to swarm. 

The Guild recommends taking beekeeping sessions before obtaining your own bees. New beekeepers can also obtain bees through a magazine catalog or online.

Though there are no more apiary sessions listed this year, the Guild hosts family-friendly Bee Sundays every other Sunday through Aug. 23. 

Keep up with the buzz on their Instagram @phillybeeguild or on the Guild’s website.

Deesarine Ballayan is a Liberian-American freelance journalist from and based in Philadelphia. Her work is featured in The Philly Download, the Logan Center, CSIS, The Philadelphia Citizen, and Billy Penn @ WHYY.