Little insects that make a big difference

About Honeybees

What is a honeybee?

3 types of honeybeesHoneybees are flying insects, and close relatives of wasps and ants. They are found on every continent on earth, except for Antarctica.

Bees of all varieties live on nectar and pollen. Without bees, pollination would be difficult and time consuming - it is estimated that one-third of the human food supply depends on insect pollination. Bees have a long, straw-like tongue called a probiscus that allows them to drink the nectar from deep within blossoms. Bees are also equipped with two wings, two antennae, and three segmented body parts (the head, the thorax, and the abdomen). Honeybees are social insects that live in colonies. The hive population consists of a single queen, a few hundred drones, and thousands of worker bees.

The honeybees we know and love here at Honeybee Centre forage for nectar and pollen from flowering plants. They use the nectar collected to create our favourite sweet treat - honey! When carrying the nectar back to the hive, their bodies break down the complex sucrose of the nectar into two simple sugars, fructose and glucose. Tucking it neatly into a honeycomb cell, the bees will then beat their wings furiously over top of this syrupy sweet liquid to fan out the moisture and thicken the substance. When it is complete, the bees will cap that cell with beeswax, sealing the perfected honey for consumption later on.

For more information about honey, check out our About Honey page.

Worker Bees

Worker bees are the most familiar-looking member of the honeybee hive, as they make up about 99% of each colony's population.

Worker bees are all female, and they do almost everything for the hive. From birth to her death 45 days later, the worker bee is given different tasks to do during different stages of her life. Worker bees are responsible for everything from feeding the larvae (the baby bees), to tending to the queen, to cleaning the hive, to collecting food, to guarding the colony, to building honeycomb.

The stinger of the worker bee is barbed, so when she is forced to defend herself or the hive, her stinger will become stuck in the skin of her victim. She is unable to pull it out, and dies when she inevitably tears herself away from the stuck stinger, leaving it behind with the venom sack still pumping venom into her victim. Consequently, honeybees are very gentle - they don't want to die any more than you want to be stung. Be nice to them, and they'll be nice to you.

Drone Bees

Male bees are called drones. Their job is to mate with queens from other hives. If they do get the opportunity to mate, they die immediately afterwards. If they do not mate, they can live up to 90 days (that's twice as long as a worker bee!)

You can identify drones in the hive by their big round bodies and large eyes. Drones are incapable of stinging.

Queen Bees

There is one queen bee per hive - she is the mom of all the other bees. She is the only fertile member of the colony, and lays about 1,500 eggs a day during spring and summer.

Queen bees are distinguished from the other members of the hive by their long abdomens and small wings. Soon after birth, queen bees will go out and have a wild weeked, where they mate with 15 or more drones over a three day period before retiring to the hive to lay eggs. The queen will not leave the hive again unless the colony swarms (looking for a new home).

When the colony needs a new queen bee, they simply choose a healthy larva, hatched from an egg of the current queen, and feed it royal jelly, a special, super-nutrious food. Royal jelly, produced in the heads of young nurse bees (worker bees whose job it is to care for the larvae), helps this larva grow into a queen. Queens can lay about 1,500 eggs per day and can live from 4 to 7 years, that's up to 57 times longer than a worker bee - it's no wonder humans love adding royal jelly to their diets, too!

Life in the Hive

Contrary to popular belief, honeybees do not build an external structure that contains their hive. They love to live in hollow spaces, whether that means a hollow tree, an empty fallen log, or in a traditional man-made bee hive.

They do, however, build the inside of their hive. Honeybees make their own special wax (beeswax), which they use to create perfect little hexagons inside their home. These little cubbyholes are called cells, and in them, the bees store everything from eggs, to pollen, to honey. For more information about beeswax, check out the About Beeswax page.

To seal their hive and to protect against diseases, the bees make a substance called propolis. Propolis is a combination of beeswax, honey, and tree resins, and is anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, and anti-viral. It disinfects and protects their hive. It is also very sticky, and honeybees love to use it to seal up any cracks or holes they may encounter on a housekeeping mission. For more information about propolis, check out the About Apitherapy page.

With such a large population all working together, some great communication skills are needed. Bees do their talking in two ways - by scent and by dancing. When a honeybee is warning her sisters about an intruder, or if all the ladies in the hive are particularly happy, honeybees have the ability to release a special hormonal scent called pheromones. The bees can detect these scents and interpret their message. A happy bee pheromone smells suspiciously like lemons, and a warning-smell has a banana-like scent.

When a forager bee needs to alert her sisters as to where a nectar source is, dancing comes in handy. She does special turns and wiggles to show where she found the food - essentially drawing a map. Come check out our observation hive and watch for dancing bees!

Honey is Best Medicinal Product for Human

About Beekeeping What is Beekeeping ? Hive inspectionBeekeeping (apiculture) is the practice of managing honeybee colonies to attain desired objectives. The most common primary objectives for managing colonies are to: Ensure large, healthy adult honeybee populations to coincide with major nectar flows; To use these strong honeybee colonies to best execute the beekeeping management plan to: Maximize the collection of nectar (ie. to maximize honey production); and/or Provide pollination services for local food crops. Some beekeepers have other objectives for their honeybee colonies such as: Raising honeybee livestock for sale to other beekeepers; Producing other honeybee substances, including bee pollen, propolis, and royal jelly. Planning is Key In order to attain the desired results, be it honey production, pollination services, or other goals, the beekeeper needs a plan. The fundamental elements that drive the plan are: Knowledge of local nectar flows. This knowledge is critical in that it tells the beekeeper which crops provide nectar and pollen for the honeybees, when the nectar flows occur, where the crops are located, and how prolific they are. This also provides timing for moving honeybee colonies into and out of fields for pollinating various food crops for growers. This knowledge not only gives the timing for maximizing the strength of colonies to take advantage of nectar flows, but also identifies times when there will be a shortage of food for the bees. Knowledge of honeybee biology. The beekeeper must understand the natural instincts of the honeybee in order to facilitate an environment to enhance the productivity of the colony. Honeybees are social insects and thus the beekeeper must manage honeybee colonies as opposed to managing at the individual bee level. To do this, the beekeeper must have a good knowledge of the honeybee life cycle, seasonal cycles of the honeybee colony, the roles of of the different types of bees, and honeybee diseases. Since most of the beekeeper's objectives revolve around honeybees collecting nectar, knowledge of the food requirements of the colony, and how the bees collect and process food, is critical. Beekeeping techniques to manipulate the colony. There are a number of basic beekeeping techniques that are used to ensure good colony health, and to maximize colony strength at the desired times. Management techniques do vary somewhat, and are fined tuned to the conditions in particular regions. Deciding on the goals and how to best use the colonies. Given the local nectar flows, pollination opportunities, and the price of honey, the beekeeper must make a plan as to how to best manage the colonies to achieve the desired objectives. Beekeeping Tools and Equipment Hive assemblyBasic Hive Equipment Modern honeybee colonies are designed to mimic the dimensions and environment of a bees nest built naturally by wild (feral) honeybees, with the added ability to remove individual frames of honeycomb for inspection and manipulation. The dimensions of the removable frames are similar in dimension to honeycomb built in the wild. One notable feature is that the space between each frame, known as the "bee space", is approx 8 mm. This space is sufficient for the bees to move around but not big enough so that the bees will build additional honeycomb in the space, thus facilitating easy removal of the frames. A standard bee hive consists of: One bottom board One or two brood chambers (each containing 9 or 10 removable frames) One queen excluder (to prevent the queen from moving from the brood chamber to the honey supers) One or more honey supers (boxes each containing 9 or 10 removable frames) One inner cover One telescoping hive cover Basic beekeeping toolsBeekeeper's Tools The essential tools required by a beekeeper to manipulate honeybee colonies are: Smoker Hive tool Bee veil Some beekeepers additionally may use a full bee suit with gloves, and a bee brush. Basic Colony Examination Beekeepers check their colonies approximately once every 10 days from spring until fall to ensure the colonies have good nutrition, strong health, and enough space. The best time to check the hive is on a warm sunny day with little wind to prevent chilling the brood and to take advantage of having most of the field bees away from the hive. The primary things that a beekeeper is looking for when doing a hive inspection are: Are there fresh eggs present? This signifies that a queen is present, even if she is not seen during the inspection. Is the brood pattern good? A spotty appearance to the brood pattern may indicate a poorly performing queen or disease issues. Does the colony have enough honey and pollen? If there is not enough food stores, and there is little external food present, the colony may need supplemental feeding. Are there any signs of disease? If so, appropriate disease treatment protocols may need to be initiated. Is there enough space? If the colony is strong and there is an abundant food source, a lack of space will cause the colony to swarm. The Beekeeper's Calendar In February and March beekeepers are checking to ensure that the bees have enough food and are strong and healthy. If a colony becomes weak, it is combined with a strong one. If a colony becomes too strong, it may be divided in half by the beekeeper, thus creating two colonies. Poor queen bees may be replaced with new ones, and beekeeping equipment is removed from colonies that did not survive the winter. In the world today, this unfortunately occurs 35% of the time. During April and May, beekeepers are checking to ensure that the bees have enough room to expand the colony. If the bees outgrow their physical space, they will swarm. During swarming, a little over half of the population of bees leaves the hive to start another colony. If this happens, the beekeeper will lose the year’s honey crop from the colony that swarms. In June and July, the majority of honey and pollen for the year is gathered. During this critical time, the beekeeper might need to visit the hives every day. Full boxes of honey are removed for extracting, and empty boxes returned to the hives for refilling. Pollen traps are emptied into freezers for storage, and no one gets a day off. By August and September, the last of the honey crop is gathered and the bees are prepped for winter. Beekeepers ensure that brood is redistributed to make all colonies of equal strength. Colonies are fed if needed, and weak colonies are combined to make strong ones. In colder climates, all of the colonies are wrapped in an insulated blanket by October. To Become a Beekeeper There is a vast knowledge base on beekeeping, including many excellent books and periodicals. Although the basic biology of the honeybee is constant, there are many variables such as weather, genetics, disease profiles, local crops and climate that combine to make beekeeping a complex problem. There are a number of different methods or variants to managing honeybee colonies. Beekeepers also tend to be a independent lot and experiment with their own methods. Did you know ? If you ask 3 beekeepers a question, you will get at least 4 different answers ! The recommended way to become a beekeeper is to read a number of books on the subject, and then to take a course from a beekeeping instructor that is familiar with your local area. Learn about our beekeeping courses.