The Bees
There are three types of bees: the queen, the workers, and the drones. In a hive, there can be hundreds of drones, thousands of workers, but usually just one queen. Each of the three types have there own specific duties which they perform.
The Queen
Life in the beehive depends upon one bee, the queen. Without the 1-2000 eggs she lays per day, the hive would fail. She begins her life as a normal, fertilized egg. However, 24 hours after that egg hatches, the workers begin to feed the queen-to-be a substance called royal jelly. This jelly makes the queen grow differently, and turn into a queen. Thus, 16 days after an egg is laid, a queen can hatch. Five to eight days after the queen hatches, she will go on her mating flight, where she will mate with up to 25 drones. Five to eight days after this, she is ready to begin her lifetime of laying.
This job does have its benefits. The queen is constantly surrounded by dozens of worker bees who are always grooming and feeding their queen. If everything goes perfectly, a queen can live up to 5 years. However, she is normally replaced after 1-2 years.
The Worker
Workers are all females, but are unable to lay eggs. Workers only live around 6 weeks in the summer because they literally work themselves to death. They can, however, live up to 6 months during the winter months.
Workers gather nectar and pollen, feed young larva, supply the hive with water, secrete beeswax, build comb, guard the beehive, and dozens of other tasks. The worker begins her life as an egg, then develops into a larva, the transforms into the final pupa stage. Then, 21 days after the egg is laid, the worker bee emerges from it’s enclosed cell and begins work.
During the summer months, the worker bees must travel 55,000 miles to gather enough nectar to produce just one pound of honey! Each worker will only produce about 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey, and 1/80 of a teaspoon of wax in her entire lifetime. The entire colony however, in a good year, can produce up to 200lbs of honey.
The Drone
Drones are the only males in the beehive. Drones don’t work, they can’t feed themselves, and they have no stinger. Their only job is to mate with queens. They are larger than the workers, yet smaller than the queens. Often overlooked, drones are still vital to the survival of the honeybees. Without them, the queen would never be able to lay fertilized eggs.
The Beekeeper
A beekeeper is a person who raises, and keeps bees. There are thousands of beekeepers in the US that keep bees, and around 250 commercial beekeepers in the state of Texas. A beekeeper’s job is to take care of the bees, and usually to try to harvest honey. Most beekeepers make around 50lbs of honey per hive. Here is an outline of what we do throughout the year:
Spring
Prepare the bees for making honey by boosting their strength. We want around 60,000-100,000 bees per hive. We also split the bees. At times, beehives get too strong so we take some of the bees and make a new hive. This is called splitting a hive.
Summer
Summer is the time to harvest the honey from the bees. If you are a commercial beekeeper, you move your beehives to a different location where they will make more honey. We also make sure our bees can get to water. The bees keep the beehive around 93 degrees, no matter how hot or cold it is outside. During the summer, the bees will actually get water, and stand at the entrance of the hive and fan their wings while they release the water they gathered. This creates an actual air-conditioning system.
Fall
During the fall, we are preparing our bees for winter by making sure they are strong enough. During the winter, the bees huddle into a tight cluster in the center of the beehive and vibrate. This friction produces heat which keeps the hive around 93 degrees. If there are not enough bees in the hive, they cannot keep themselves warm enough. We make sure the bees have plenty of honey to eat. Bees must have honey to produce warmth, so we must make sure they won’t run low.
Winter
We must keep the hives out of the direct wind, and make sure the bees have plenty to eat. We begin feeding the bees in January to get them ready for the coming honey flow in spring.
Got honey?
- Honey is made by honey bees. Bees fly to millions of flowers and gather tiny droplets of nectar from the flowers. The bees convert the nectar to honey by storing it in cells, and then evaporate the water out by fanning their wings over the honey. They often fan 24/7 to convert the nectar into honey. When it is cured, the bees cap the cell with a thin layer of wax (which they also make for themselves) to keep it clean. The honey is the bees source of carbohydrates, and the pollen is their source of protein. Contrary to popular belief, the bees do not use pollen to make honey.
- The bees store the honey for their food during times when flowers are not blooming. They then live off of this stored honey throughout the winter.
- Honey is produced in many forms. The most common form of honey is liquid honey which has been removed from the honey combs by machines called extractors. The machines spin the comb until is removed from them. Chunk comb honey is a jar of liquid honey with a large piece of honey comb with it. Comb honey is usually just the comb with honey in it by itself.
- Honey comes in many different colors and flavors. Almost every beekeepers honey has a different color as well as flavor. This is because of the different flowers the bees gather nectar from. Honey can almost clear, to almost dark in color.
- Honey has been used for centuries for medicinal values, and as a sweetener. It has long been known to be healthier for humans than white sugar. Pure raw honey is full of extra nutrients, and it is easier on the digestive system than most sugars. The FDA has recently approved special honey as a wound care product.
The Swarm
Almost everyone has a ‘honeybee swarm story’. What actually did happen when those thousands of bees swarmed onto your tree, bush or house? What brought them? They were probably not killer bees trying to drive you out of your house, but they were honeybees looking for a home. A swarm is about half the bees from an existing hive with their old queen. When a hive becomes overly crowded (usually in the spring) half of the bees ‘swarm’ and look for a new home. Often they temporarily land on a tree or bush or anything else convenient, until they can locate a permanent home.
They are normally about the size of a football, and in most cases they are very docile. Just before they leave the hive, they engorge themselves on honey so they will not have to gather any on the trip. They are so stuffed that they are too full to attack anyone.
Fun Bee Facts
- Honeybees pollinate 80% of all fruit, vegetable and seed crops in the USA.
- Bees must travel over 55,000 miles and visit 2 million flowers to produce 1 lb. of honey!
- A honeybee can fly 15 mph.
- It would take only 1 ounce of honey to fuel one bee’s flight around the world.
- Cured honey will NEVER spoil.
- One honeybee will only produce 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey in its entire life.
- Honeybees are the only insect that produces food for humans.
- It takes 2 million flowers to make 1 pound of honey!
- The queen bee can lay up to 2,000 eggs in1 day – that’s 132,000 annually!
- One gallon of honey is enough to fuel a bee’s flight to the moon and back!
- One ounce of honey could fuel a bee’s flight around the world.