GETTING TO KNOW YOUR BEES

— ELIZABETH LAWRENCE

In this chapter, you'll begin to learn about the bees themselves. It's important that you get to know the lifestyle and behaviors of these fascinating creatures before you jump in and start working with them. We'll also cover a brief history of beekeeping — did you know that you're about to share in an endeavor that is thousands of years old?

A BRIEF HISTORY OF BEEKEEPING

The lure of honey seems to have always been a strong incentive to people of all backgrounds across many cultures. The ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Chinese, Israelites, and Romans are all known to have tended bees in locations as diverse as Africa, Europe, and Asia. The ancient Maya also kept a variety of stingless (albeit less prolific) bees in Central America. But the bees we know and use today in North America are descendants of Western honey bees, which were developed in Europe and carried across the ocean by colonists. Even prior to the 1700s, established beehives were already in place across New York, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania.

One problem that beekeepers faced throughout all these times was that there wasn't a good way to harvest the honey. Harvesting could involve the destruction of all or part of the hive, depending on the type of hive used. Smoking the hives with sulfur was also sometimes used to kill the entire colony of bees, which would leave the physical hive intact but result in the destruction of all the bees.

All of this changed in the mid-1800s, when L. L. Langstroth of Pennsylvania developed a new style of beehive, which is still in use today. The Langstroth hive is special because it is made of individual components that can be easily taken apart and examined without upsetting the bees or destroying their work. The bees in this kind of hive build their combs and store their honey on a series of movable frames, which can be easily and nondestructively removed when it's time to harvest honey.

Today, beekeeping means different things to different people. For some it's a business (of both honey collection and professional crop pollination services), but for many others it's a lovely, enjoyable hobby that can give a lifetime of pleasure. Throughout this book we hope to share some knowledge that will help you achieve that pleasure.

ALL ABOUT BEES

Honey bees are the most important part of any hive, so let's take a few minutes to learn about these fascinating creatures and how they live, work, and sometimes even dance.

MEMBERS OF THE HIVE

A beehive is made up of three distinct types of bees:

1. Workers

2. Drones

3. The Queen

Let's take a look at each type individually:

WORKER BEES are female bees that typically do not lay eggs. They do, however, tend to the queen, tend to the nursery of young bees, build comb, store food, and fly miles and miles and miles from flower to flower collecting pollen and nectar. Wow! When people talk about "busy bees" they surely must mean the workers. Worker bees also have glands in their abdomen that produce wax, as well as glands in their heads that are capable of producing ROYAL JELLY, which is a nutrient-rich substance used to feed LARVAE (baby bees).

The QUEEN is usually the only egg-laying female in the hive. For this reason, the queen is given special treatment from the rest of the workers. She is fed, tended, and protected by the workers. In exchange for their care, the queen supplies the hive with the eggs needed to sustain a healthy, working colony. The queen is the largest bee in the hive, with a slender, elegant body — considerably larger than that of a worker bee. There are only two times when there might be more than one egg-laying female in a hive. One is when the main queen is aging and the hive is considering producing a replacement (known as SUPERSEDURE). The other time is when the queen has died, and confused worker bees begin laying eggs. If you have laying worker bees (manifested by a sudden increase in the number of drones in the hive, or multiple eggs laid in one cell), then you have no queen and you'll need to take action to replace her.

Before a queen can lay eggs, however, she must take to the skies and perform a MATING FLIGHT with several drone bees.

DRONES are male bees. They have a slightly different build than the workers, with a generally larger body and significantly larger eyes to aid in the location of a flying queen. The drones fly with new queen bees and mate with her, but do not contribute to the hive otherwise. You won't see drones out collecting pollen, since their legs have no pollen baskets, and you won't see them defending the hive — drones don't have a stinger! They cannot produce wax for building, either. Still, they are essential to the lives of bees, and a healthy colony in midsummer might be home to 1,000 drones.

THE LIFE CYCLE OF A HONEY BEE

Let's take a moment to familiarize ourselves with the honey bee life cycle. It's useful to you as the beekeeper to be able to locate, identify, and understand the various stages of bees you're looking at, because a healthy hive and a healthy queen will produce strong BROOD (baby bees). Let's take a look at this brood.

Eggs

All honey bees begin life as an egg laid by the queen in an empty hexagonal cell. On a busy summer day, a healthy queen might lay as many as 2,000 eggs!

Honey bee eggs are very tiny and not always easy to find if you're a beginner. Some people recommend using black plastic hive frames because the small white eggs will stand out more against the black (see here to learn more about frames).

Larvae

Within a few days, the egg hatches ("dissolves" might be a better word for it) and out pops a small larva. The larvae are white and chubby and don't really look at all like insects. They can't feed themselves, so they are fed instead by the workers.

Worker bees produce royal jelly out of glands in their heads. The royal jelly is a rich substance, full of vitamins, and the workers feed this to the larvae for three days. After that, the rapidly growing larvae are switched to a diet of honey and pollen. (If, however, the hive is replacing a queen, they will continue to feed a handful of larvae straight royal jelly, which will spark the development of a new queen.) The larvae are fed over 1,000 times a day!

After about six days (it can be slightly shorter or longer depending on whether the individual larva is to become a drone, worker, or queen), the larva has eaten its fill and has grown quite large. At this time, worker bees seal the larva's cell over with a cap made of wax and perhaps a bit of PROPOLIS (a sticky substance collected by the bees).

Pupae

Now is where the...