Dandelions in the Lawn

The dandelion is a hearty member of the sunflower family of plants, the composites. The composites make up a very large family of flowering plants, and they are considered as major bee plants. Many of our favorite garden flowers are composites: asters, sunflowers, daisies, bachelor’s buttons, coreopsis, coneflowers, and black-eyed Susans. Everyone is familiar with the dandelion with its bright yellow flower, broad leaves indented in the shape of lions’ teeth, and seed heads that children love to blow into the wind. The flowers are often the first to bee seen in January as well as the last to be seen in December. Some people make salad greens of dandelion leaves. The plant is used to make wine. Many simply appreciate the beauty of the bright yellow flowers. Perhaps, though, the greatest use of the dandelion is for forage for the honey bee and the native pollinators. Producing both nectar and pollen, it is at times the only flowering plant available for the bees. For them, it may be a life saver.

In some neighborhoods the dandelion is considered a weed in the lawn to be sprayed regularly with herbicides. It would be beneficial to the pollinators if more people would leave a portion of the lawn, maybe the backyard, with dandelions. I consider those bright yellow flowers a part of a healthy environment.
--Richard

Bees in the Flower Pot

An overnight rain filled the exposed flower pots with water. The next day this flooded planter was visited by great numbers of honey bees. At this time of the year, many people find honey bees in locations that they don’t expect to find them. These bees appeared to be collecting water. Honey bees bring a large amount of water into the hive. In the summer, water is used to cool the hive. In the early spring the bees are using water to dilute stored honey. The colonies are expanding rapidly and are consuming large amounts of food. At this time there is not a great abundance of nectar available for the bees to forage. To make up for the shortage of nectar, the bees consume honey stores left over from the winter. To consume the honey, made up of concentrated sugars, the bees bring in water to dilute the honey. The adult bees derive energy from the honey. They mix the honey with pollen to make “bee bread” to feed to the developing brood.

Other honey bees may be found in bird feeders, collecting dust from the millet seeds. The dust has the texture and appearance of pollen. It is one of several similar substances brought back to the bee hive by pollen-foraging bees. They are unaware that the dust has far less nutritional value than the pollen they seek. If there is a diversity of plants available, the bees bring in pollen from many different ones. This helps ensure good nutrition for the bees. Often we’re surprised at the places we find honey bees.
--Richard

Swarming Bees Seek a Permanent Home

After a swarm of bees has landed on an object in the vicinity of their hive, they send out scout bees searching for a suitable new home. The natural home of the honey bee is the cavity of a hollow tree. A bee hive is a hollow wooden box which simulates a hollow log. To the great displeasure of many, the hollow walls of a house or building are sometimes chosen by the scout bees to be the perfect cavity for the new brood nest. Here, you see me in the process of catching a swarm of bees before they have the opportunity to move into a nearby house.

Once the swarm of bees has located a suitable cavity, it will fly in a mass movement to its new home. As soon as the bees enter the cavity, they immediately begin building a nest of beeswax. The queen will start laying eggs as soon as some cells are built in the brood nest. This will mark the beginning of a new honey bee colony.
--Richard

Honey Bees Swarm in the Spring

Swarming is the way that honey bees propagate on a colony-wide basis. In the swarming process, the bees create a new queen to remain in the nest while the old queen flies away along with a large number of bees, often half of the colony. Upon leaving their nest, the bees fly around in a swirling extended mass. I try to choose a word to describe this mass of bees, and I think the best one is “swarm.” After flying for a few minutes, the swarm will gather together into a tight cluster hanging from a tree limb or attached to a structure like a mail box or a building. The swarm of bees is organized into a tight cluster by pheromones, or scents, given off by the queen and certain worker bees.

The cluster of bees will remain on its resting place, the tree limb or structure, for a few hours or even for a few days. While it is there, scout bees leave the cluster searching for an appropriate cavity to serve as a permanent home for the colony. Here, the swarm has gathered on a large limb of a maple tree.
--Richard

Swarm Season Begins

Honey bees expand their range and increase the number of colonies by dividing their colony in two. This process of propagating bees on a colony-wide basis is called swarming. Typically, honey bees swarm once a year. This usually occurs in the spring, however some swarming continues through the summer and fall.

The process of swarming begins with the growth of the colony early in the spring. Often the bees will outgrow the size of the cavity the colony is occupying. The bees will begin swarm preparations by creating a new queen, as every colony must have a queen. Once there is a new queen in the colony, or one is nearing the point of emerging as an adult, the colony will divide itself. Usually half of the bees or more will fly away, accompanied by the old queen. In a swirling cloud of thousands of bees, the swarm drifts around until it gathers on a nearby resting place where it stays until it moves along to a cavity for a permanent nest. Here, a swarm of bees found children’s playground equipment as a convenient resting area. In many such cases, swarms become interesting but unwanted visitors.
--Richard

Redbud in Bloom

Along rural ditch banks and field margins as well as in suburban lawns an impressive pinkish red tree is now in bloom. Upon close inspection we see honey bees in great numbers amid the colorful blossoms along the twigs and branches. This is the redbud, a member of the legume or pea family. The legumes are an important family of bee plants which includes wild and cultivated peas and beans, vetches, clovers, alfalfa, lespedeza, wisteria, locusts, soybeans, and peanuts. The honey bees gather both pollen and nectar from the redbud at a time when large amounts of food are being consumed to feed the colony’s rapidly expanding brood nest. These bright red trees are a welcomed sight to both the bees and the beekeeper.
--Richard

Building Bee Hives

The natural home of the honey bee is a hollow tree. A tree which has been damaged by lightning, or woodpeckers, or termites will often have a cavity in which a colony of honey bees can thrive. The bees are not at all particular with the appearance of the cavity they choose for their nest. It may be a tree, a wooden bee hive, or the space inside the walls of your house. Wooden porch columns are similar to hollow trees, and make extremely attractive nest sites for honey bee colonies. The bees only need a tiny opening to serve as an entrance. Actually, many homeowners live with honey bees and never know it if the point where the bees enter the home is up high or out of view.

In the United States, all managed honey bee colonies are housed in bee hives of the design developed by Philadelphia minister L. L. Langstroth in 1851. Beekeepers, like Dallas, assemble bee hives to add to the bee yard as the bees multiply rapidly in the spring. The beekeepers build the wooden bee hives, equipped with frames. The bees finish their nest by building beeswax comb on the frames. The comb holds the brood—the developing honey bees—and the honey.
--Richard