We couldn't figure out beekeeping. Tried a couple times, but the bees would leave or die. You have to either live a mile from the nearest row crop field or coop up your bees when they spray. So beekeeping is something of a suburban only food source. But keeping goats is a rural only food source and I can trade one cheese wheel for a years supply of honey.
That's too bad. All bees will swarm if you dont keep killing the queens. -I mean the queen cells. I think I squashed about 10 of them. Before I moved, i just let them swarm and take off.
A healthy hive will swarm, but that's just some of the bees leaving with the new queen. Sometimes the queen is old and the new queen cells renew the queen of the main hive. My bees weren't healthy and they abandoned the hive. I think the first ran out of honey during the winter and the second split at the first sign of cold weather because they were half killer bees.