Bees Make Cleansing Flights

The winds changed directions today. A southerly wind brought warmer conditions, and the bees were able to break out of their cold-weather cluster and fly from their hives. As soon as the air warmed, bees poured from the hives for cleansing flights. Honey bees generally don’t fly until the air temperature rises to 50 degrees. Cold weather for the past few days has held the bees in their hives. After several days of confinement, the bees were ready to make a cleansing flight to eliminate their body wastes. Honey bees never defecate inside their hive. This is one of their behavioral traits that serve to help prevent disease from spreading through the colony. Honey bees maintain a clean nest as a healthy place to raise their brood and store honey. Worker bees varnish the hive and seal cracks and openings with a coating of antibacterial and antifungal propolis bee glue. Worker bees clean debris from the hive and guard bees attack and kill intruding wasps, hornets, yellow jackets, and honey bees from foreign hives. Workers remove these dead insects as well as honey bees that die within the hive. Sick bees leave the hive to die, and diseased bees are turned away at the hive entrance by guards. Strong colonies remove the eggs and larvae of wax moths and small hive beetles from cells and out of the way corners of the hive. If a mouse finds its way inside the hive, guard bees sting and kill it; then, workers entomb the mouse in propolis.

One of the unexpected findings resulting from the analysis of the honey bee’s genome was the lack of complexity of the honey bee immune system. It was generally expected that an organism that has existed for millions of years would be protected by a complex immune system. It seems that the honey bee’s evolutionary path instead relied upon a number of behavioral traits to protect the colony from disease.
--Richard

Summer Hive Inspection

In the summertime, hive inspections are made less frequently. Because the honey supers are placed atop the hive bodies, it may mean moving hundreds of pounds of equipment just to get to the brood nest. By August, the hives have between two and six medium-size honey supers in place. Each super may weigh up to sixty pounds. The heat and humidity in the Delta are true limiting factors in the beekeeping task. Still, there are times when it is necessary to look into the brood nest and evaluate the hive. If there are dead bees on the ground in front of the hive or a lower than normal population of bees inside the hive, a thorough inspection hive is made. This year’s excessive number of rainy days made for some sporadic nectar flows. Some nectar producing plants just didn’t produce nectar during their bloom period simply because the cloud cover reduced photosynthesis. During these times of dearth, some bees, particularly those of Eastern European lineage, revert to survival instincts and stop brood production. These cool-climate races of bees survive during long winters and nectar dearth by stopping brood production, which consumes large amounts of food.

Click on the photo, taken in the brood nest of a hive showing a low population of bees in the honey supers. There are plenty of bees in the brood nest area. All three castes of bees can be found: workers, drones, and the queen. A drone is in the upper, right quadrant; the queen, marked in green, is to the left of center. Capped brood, holding pupae, is present; but there are no eggs or open larvae to be found. It appears that the queen has not been laying eggs for at least nine days. This colony should survive. With a strong nectar flow from fall wildflowers, or my supplemental feeding of sugar syrup, the queen should start laying eggs again and replenish the colony population. This year’s honey crop will be diminished, though.
--Richard

Bees Produce a New Queen

Honey bees are social insects. Each honey bee colony has a single queen bee. She is of utmost importance to the colony, as she lays all of the colony’s eggs. The loss of the queen can lead to the loss of the entire colony. To be prepared to replace her if necessary, the colony regularly produces new queens. If the new queens are not needed, the colony kills them. In the photo we can see two queen cells that the colony has produced. They are the elongated structures on the left side of the picture. Queen cells hang down vertically from the combs, while worker and drone cells are aligned horizontally. The photo actually shows all three types of cells. There is a drone cell, shaped like a bullet, on the edge of the lower queen cell. The remaining capped cells all contain developing worker bees.

In the photo we can also see workers with their heads in empty cells in the brood pattern. These bees are cleaning out the cells which were opened to remove bees developing with parasitic mites. Removing the mites in this manner is a genetic trait, called hygienic behavior, which beekeepers try to pass along to other colonies. They do this by grafting larvae from this colony’s queen or moving one of these queen cells to another hive. This is a healthy colony of honey bees.
--Richard

Bee Hive Inspection

A springtime inspection of the bee hives reveals strong colonies with bees boiling over the top bars of the frames. While the late winter inspections found only a few frames covered with bees, now most hives have bees covering every frame. This is just what the beekeeper wants to see. Whether the hive is being managed for pollination service or honey production, a large population of bees is needed at this time of the year. It is actually quite a balancing act for the beekeeper to encourage the build-up of the bee population to great strength without causing overcrowding leading to swarming. Once the colony swarms, there is little chance of producing enough bees for commercial pollination purposes or for producing a surplus of honey that may be harvested.

In the picture we see the queen bee marked by red paint on her thorax. The paint helps the beekeeper identify the queen. I mark all of my queens and keep records on each ones performance. Click on the photo and you can see each stage of honey bee development. Above the queen there are eggs. To her right are c-shaped larvae in various stages of development. To the right of the larvae are the capped cells of the pupae, and further to the right are the empty cells where the adult bees have just emerged. Most of the bees in the picture are workers; the large bee to the right of the queen is a drone. This inspection revealed a most favorable bee hive.
--Richard

Honey Bees Build Up for Spring

As we approach the beginning of spring, the honey bees are rapidly expanding their colonies. While the bees huddled together in a small cluster over the winter with very little egg laying, they are now expanding their colony. The strong queen is now laying fifteen hundred or more eggs per day. When we open the hive the bees not only cover the frames, but they also spill over onto the tops of the frames. The majority of the bees that we see here are workers, but drones are starting to be seen in the hive as well. One large, dark-colored drone can be seen just to the left of the center of the picture.

The honey bees’ natural tendency is to expand the colony’s population at this time and then split the colony into two. This colony-wide propagation is called swarming. It is the way that the bees seek out new nesting areas and expand their range. With the approach of spring, the large bee population is a welcomed sight for the beekeeper. It takes a large population of bees to take advantage of the spring flowers soon to burst into bloom.
--Richard