Earl Schnell - My Bee-Ginning

The Bees

There are many species of honeybees. Some include Italian, Russian, Carniolan, Cordovan, and more. The new beekeeper may want to purchase the bees with the least defensive behavior as possible. These normally are the Italian, Carniolan, or a mixture. Honeybees arent aggressive, but they can be very defensive. The bees are only trying to protect their young and their food stores. The Russian bees are one of the most defensive. New beekeepers may want to avoid Russian bees, while more experienced beekeepers may want them for their ability to survive adverse conditions. There are beekeepers who wear shorts when working with their bees, and then on the other extreme, there are beekeepers who have to wear a full suit just to open the hive. A new beekeeper will need to develop a comfort level around bees. Experienced beekeepers know the importance of being gentle with their bees and to always use a smoker. The calmer the bees, the easier it will be for the beekeeper. The less defensive bees will make this much easier.

In the following paragraphs, the different types of bees in a hive will be explained. The length of time for bee development is different depending if the egg laid is going to be a worker, a drone, or a queen. Understanding this time difference will help plan when to do certain beekeeping task like to prevent swarming or when to make splits.

The queen

The queen is a mature female. She has the longest life span in the colony living for up to three years. A good queen may lay 1,5002,000 eggs in a single day. She can lay over 200,000 eggs during her lifetime, while mating with multiple drones on her original mating flight. The queen determines the sex of the egg being laid. The worker bees build the comb with different-size cells. The queen will lay an unfertilized egg in the bigger comb cells and a fertilized egg in the normal-size comb cells. Fertilized eggs will become female worker bees, and unfertilized eggs will become male bees called drones. The males are bigger than the female worker bees, therefore requiring a bigger cell. The queen will be very prolific egg layer in her first year and will slow as she gets older.

Queen

The queen is larger than the other bees in the hive and has a slim torpedo shape. She does have a stinger but only uses it to kill other queens. It takes sixteen days from egg to hatching to make a queen. Under normal conditions, a hive will have only one queen.

Queen cell

The queens pheromone causes the bees to work together to accomplish the needed tasks. A young queen emits a strong pheromone, and as she gets older, the strength of her pheromone starts to subside. This is why a hive with a younger queen is less likely to swarm. The queen is thought to be in charge, but it is really the worker bees who are really in charge. The worker bees give the queen more or less food, which regulates when and how many eggs the queen will lay. The queen is expected to lay many eggs per day. The workers will replace the queen if she slows down for any reason or if her pheromones are too low. The workers will form queen cells either in the middle of the foundation or at the bottom of the frame. If the queen cells are in the middle of the foundation, the workers are going to replace the queen, and if the queen cells are on the bottom of the frame, the bees are going to swarm. Every colony must have a queen. A hive without a queen will become much smaller and eventually abscond.

The worker bee

Worker

Workers carrying pollen into the hive.

The Worker Bee Lifecycle

Guard Bees

Worker bees are sexually underdeveloped females. There can be as many as 60,000 workers in a single colony. They are called workers because that is what they do. They collect food and water for the colony, build wax comb, do the housework, maintain the interior temperatures of the hive, guard the hive against intruders, and forage for nectar, pollen, and water in the later stage of their life. The worker bees give their life protecting the hive. The worker can only sting once because their stinger and venom sac are ripped out of them when they sting.

This results in their death. Female worker bees can lay eggs, but because they are not mated, they produce eggs that only develop into drones. The queens pheromone blocks the worker bees desire to lay eggs. A hive without a queen for an extended period may have laying workers. It takes a fertilized egg twenty-one days from egg being laid until becoming a worker bee.

The drone

Drone

Drones are the males in the colony. The drone is a very large bee with large head and eyes that predominate the head. The rear of the drone is rounded. Drones cannot sting because they do not have a stinger. Drones do not have any hive duties. They have only one purpose, and that is to mate with the queen. They have a short life of luxury. The drones are welcome into any hive to get food or shelter. Therefore drones can spread disease or carry mites from one hive to another. The drones have a very short life. Once they mate with the queen, they die. The colony will only allow the female bees to stay in the hive during the winter. The females do all the work, and the drones are not needed during the winter. The drones die after they are evicted in the fall. The colony reduces its size because food will be short in the winter. New drones will be made in the spring. It takes an unfertilized egg twenty-four days from the egg being laid until becoming a drone.

Honeybee facts

Honeybees were brought to America in 1621. The study of beekeeping is called apiculture. The area where the bees are kept is called an apiary. There can be over sixty thousand bees in a single colony (hive). Each colony has only one adult queen who can live two to three years. The average life of a worker bee is less than forty-five days (during the summer). The wings of the foraging workers become frayed and continue to deteriorate until they can no longer fly. A strong colony can produce sixty pounds of honey in a season. Sixty pounds is a little less than five gallons. Every pound of honey produced requires nectar collection from visiting two million flowers. Bees produce one pound of wax for every ten pounds of honey.

Honey being stored in the comb

Why do bees make honey? Honeybees make honey as a way of storing food to eat over the cold winter period. Honey is ideal for bees because it is full of nutrients and high in sugars. It is very high in energy, which the bees use to keep the cluster warm. The beekeepers job is to make the bees feel an urgency to store more honeys than they need. This extra honey is removed for the beekeepers use.