Bee Basics - Who Knew?

Maybe you all are way smarter than me, maybe you paid attention in 4th grade science....apparently I did not (sorry Mrs Driskel). Here we dove in to these bees, having no clue what we were doing BUT also having no true understanding of what a bee does, how it works,their caste system etc. In the few months we've had these bees, I've already been asked several times about this so I thought I'd share a tiny tidbit of knowledge we've gleaned so far.

First of all - if you are a reader and like to read something educational yet interesting I'd highly recommend getting Beekeeping for Dummies - by Howland Blackiston.

Its long, but its super informative when it comes to explaining the bee, the hive, etc. I'm still not thru it but I'm loving it! Most of the info below will be from this book.

Lets start with the types of honeybee that reside in the hive: worker, drone and the lovely queen!

Picture taken from Beekeeping for Dummies 

To quote Howland - the queen bee is the heart and soul of the colony. Oh how true this is. Each hive will have only 1 queen at a time (there are some rare instances where there may be a mother/daughter pair- but as a rule 1 queen). The majority of each hive is going to consist of worker bees. Ok this I knew - and I would have guessed 1 queen - but did you know as bees hatch they are given different roles within the hive? That as they mature their roles change and they are given more and more complex of jobs? 

Worker bees begin as what are labeled "house" bees. They maintain the hive. This can be anything from being a nurse bee to removing dead bees from the hive, fanning to control temperature, being guardesmen...(or would this be guardswomen?), and building comb.
          So a bit about what that means - they fan to heat and cool - the queen and brood must remain at 93 degrees....year round - its supposed to be -12 here on Sunday night.....fan little bees FAN! They also produce wax from glands on their under bellies. (who knew this? I'll be honest - I had no clue!), they also feed the queen, and carry her excrement from the hive....how you get chosen for that fabulous job I'm not sure. 

Ok - so they start as a house bee and finally graduate to forager or field bee. This is the most dangerous time of their lives. Wait did I mention that all of these jobs they learn, graduate and end with happen within a 6 week period - the lifespan of a worker bee during spring/summer.

Drones - oh the drones. The only male in the colony. Its super easy to confuse a drone for a queen...ok maybe not for someone experienced but we certainly did in the chaos of our lack of knowledge. The drone, he does no work in the hive, he cannot protect, he doesn't forage, and doesn't even have a stinger! His only purpose is to mate with virgin queens. (after which he immediately dies as he leaves a super important part of his anatomy in the queen!) During the summer months there could be in the ballpark of 60,000 bees in the hive, but of those maybe a couple hundred or so may be drones. When the air starts to change and the bees begin to prepare for winter the worker bees have the job of kicking out the drones. They eat a lot and serve no purpose thru winter so out they go! 

The queen - she is bigger than the worker bees, but longer and slimmer. When you see her she's quite beautiful! When a queen egg is laid, her cell is larger than a normal cell to accommodate her size and she is fed royal jelly which creates "the queen". If more than one queen cell hatches, the strongest (or maybe its the quickest) survives. I've watched many YouTube videos of swarms being collected and if you find the queen, the rest of the colony will march right into the box. Its an amazing sight! They are beyond loyal to their queen - unless she's getting old, or a bad layer, then they replace her!

                                                                                         The queen is darker, facing down and in  

                                                                                                    the middle of this picture

                                                                                                    Courtesy of  Jordan Schwartz at www.hive-mind.com/bee/blog

So there is an overview of the honeybee - jobs and roles in the colony! Maybe you all knew this, but hopefully you learned something new! Each day I feel like I learn something new and it just makes these tiny creations so much more amazing! 

If you want a little swarm collection excitement - check out 628DirtRooster on YouTube - LINK - where hobby beekeeping is a way.of.life. This guy is great, and I've learned quite a bit and had quite a few laughs! 

*Info taken from Beekeeping for Dummies, queen picture courtesy of  Jordan Schwartz on Flikr*