From catching bumblebees to testing thermodynamics: one beekeeper's first season with Primal Bee
Gosia's beekeeping instincts started early.
As a little girl in Poland, she'd catch bumblebees in jars, placing flowers inside and poking holes in the lids so they could breathe. Several decades later, she runs 60 colonies across five locations with her husband, raises queens, and practices uloterapia - hive air therapy where people breathe the bioactive air from bee colonies.
This spring, she added something new to her operation: a Primal Bee hive.
The 2025 season in northern Poland wasn't easy. Cold spring. Heavy rain. The kind of year where beekeepers lower their expectations and hope colonies just survive.
Gosia's Primal Bee colony had other plans.
The learning curve
"I have to admit that when I first saw the hive, the thing that truly surprised me was the thickness of the walls in the brood chamber," Gosia says. "I didn't expect them to be that thick."
She runs traditional Wielkopolski hives - the standard in Poland. Switching to a different system meant new techniques. Wiring the larger frames took practice. Inspections looked different. The brood frames have significantly more surface area than she was used to.
But some concerns disappeared quickly.
"I expected the brood frames, once filled with brood, honey, and pollen, to be very heavy - but those concerns quickly disappeared. Now I know I can easily carry out inspections in Primal Bee hive with very little effort."
The larger frames actually made certain tasks easier. Finding the queen on the bigger surface area? Simpler than in traditional frames. Spotting queen cells? Much more obvious.
And instead of inspecting ten frames in a single brood box - or up to twenty in a well-developed Wielkopolski hive - she only had seven to check in the Primal Bee system.
Dynamic development in a difficult season
Gosia installed her bees on foundation in early April 2025.
Four weeks later, the entire brood chamber was fully occupied. All seven frames drawn out. Five frames covered in brood across about three-quarters of their surface.
"The colony's development in the Primal Bee hive was very dynamic," she notes.
This happened during one of the worst seasons her region had seen. Cold. Rainy. The kind of weather that normally slows everything down.
But her Primal Bee colony kept moving.
The bees started flying at temperatures as low as 8-9°C. That's significantly lower than typical foraging temperatures. More flight hours means more forage collected - even in marginal conditions.
"I observed a noticeably lower consumption of feed," Gosia says. "I estimate it to be about one-third less than in a traditional hive."
The supersedure test
Midseason, the colony showed signs of swarming. Gosia caged the queen for three weeks - a standard intervention to break the swarming mood.
A week after releasing the queen, six frames were again brood-covered across three-quarters of their surface. Clear proof of the colony's development momentum.
Then something interesting happened. The bees initiated a supersedure - replacing their queen naturally. The colony raised a new queen successfully while maintaining their strength.
"The young queen started laying very well, and now the colony is going into winter very strong - seven frames densely covered with young bees."
For Gosia, this was a critical observation. A colony that can successfully supersede while maintaining population strength demonstrates resilience. It suggests the system isn't just supporting survival - it's supporting thriving.
Winter feeding: 20% less
When Gosia prepared her colonies for winter, she made a decision based on what she'd observed all season.
If the bees were consuming roughly one-third less feed during active season, and if they were managing resources more efficiently, then winter feeding calculations should reflect that.
She applied a 20% reduction in winter feed compared to her traditional hives.
"I'm very curious to see how the bees will overwinter, but I feel quite optimistic," she says. "The hive has a long internal food pathway and excellent thermal properties, so winter conditions should be much easier on the colony."
One treatment remains: oxalic acid dribbling in November. Then she waits.
Next season's plans
This year was about observation. Gosia ran the Primal Bee hive alongside her traditional equipment, watching how the colony responded to the system's thermodynamic properties.
Next season, she's going deeper.
"I plan to develop various techniques for managing swarming tendencies, creating bee packages, and queen rearing within the Primal Bee hive."
For a beekeeper whose greatest joy comes from checking breeder colonies to see how many queen cells the bees accepted, this is the natural progression. Understanding how the thermal efficiency and frame design affect queen rearing opens new possibilities.
The bottom line
After 18 years of beekeeping, Gosia doesn't deal in vague impressions. Her observations are specific: enhanced colony development dynamics, flights at 8-9°C when other colonies stayed clustered, one-third reduction in feed consumption.
The best beekeeping innovations aren't about making life easier for beekeepers. They're about creating conditions where bees can do what they do best, without wasting energy.
Gosia's been watching bees since she was catching bumblebees in jars with flowers and air holes. She knows what normal colony behavior looks like. And she knows what this season's Primal Bee colony showed her wasn't normal.
It was better.
Gosia manages her apiaries in northern Poland, where she combines traditional beekeeping with uloterapia. After 18 years of beekeeping experience across multiple subspecies and management systems, she tested her first Primal Bee hive during the 2025 season. She's currently preparing for her first winter with the system and planning expanded techniques for next season.
