Spiderwort in Bloom

Spiderwort, seen in today’s photo, is in bloom now. This perennial native wildflower is a reliable source of pollen for honey bees. The plant blooms in the morning, with blooms usually closing by noon. Foraging bees learn this bloom period pattern and forage early in the day, collecting ample amounts of pollen, which they deposit in cells close to the brood. Pollen grains, a flowering plant’s male reproductive cells, are found on the anthers of flowers, which in spiderwort stand on stalks in the flower. When a honey bee visits a flower, pollen grains attach to the honey bee’s hairy body, and the bee then grooms the pollen into pollen baskets on her hind legs. Some pollen is inadvertently brushed off the bee onto the sticky stigma of the flower, part of its female reproductive system, pollinating the plant. This accidental pollination by the bee is the first stage in the reproduction of the plant, producing seed and fruit.

Honey bee colonies must forage ample amounts of pollen to support their brood, their developing offspring, which the colony’s nurse bees feed in the larval stage of development. Pollen contains protein, fats, vitamins, and minerals. When pollen is added to honey, a carbohydrate, honey bees have a complete diet, entirely derived from flowers. The pollen, mixed with honey and yeast and bacteria from the bee’s gut microbiome is known as “bee bread.” The yeast starts fermentation of the bee bread that serves as preservation. The fermentation also cracks the hard shell of pollen grains releasing the nutrients. Nurse bees consume the bee bread and produce brood food in glands in their bodies. Brood food is fed to the developing brood in its larval stage.

--Richard

Springtime Expansion

Honey bee populations expand rapidly in the spring. Prolific queens are stimulated to lay eggs at their maximum rate in April as flowers come into bloom in abundance. Hives fill with bees, and those colonies that do not have enough capacity make preparations for swarming. The same conditions that lead colonies to reproduce by division and swarming are the conditions that queen producers set up when rearing queens, and these newly produced queens are used to establish new colonies. Beekeepers regularly purchase colonies to expand their apiaries or to replace overwinter colony losses. They may purchase entire hives with their established bees, but more frequently they purchase nucleus colonies, “nucs,” or packaged bees like those awaiting delivery at the recent Bee Day event at Bemis Honey Bee Farm shown in today’s photo. Hundreds of previously ordered packages of bees and nucleus colonies were passed out to beekeepers from across the region.

Nucleus colonies are small honey bee colonies derived by separating frames from existing full-size hives. A nuc is a colony in equilibrium. It typically contains five frames of bees on combs with an egg-laying queen, brood, and bees. Since a nuc is an established colony with a queen and combs available for her to continue laying eggs, it is ready to expand in its new hive. A package of bees, on the other hand, is not an established colony when the beekeeper receives it. Typically, it is three pounds of bees measured by weight (approximately 12,000 bees). The bees in the package are not on frames. Included in the package is a queen bee in a cage with the queen separated from the rest of the bees for her protection. She is held in a cage with a candy plug delaying her release into her new hive. Over a few days, workers pass food to the queen and get accustomed to her pheromones while chewing through the candy, releasing her. Then, the bees are a family—a colony.

--Richard