Early Fall Hive Inspection

Honey bees born in the spring and summer have a different physiology from the bees born in the fall. The bees that live in the warm seasons live from five to six weeks. Honey bees born in September and October, however, can live for up to six months. The considerable difference in the life expectancy of the fall bees is due to differences in physiology and lesser flying in the winter. In the spring and summer, the colony produces great numbers of bees to exploit the available flowers. Young bees spend the first three weeks of their lives in the hive performing a series of jobs related to their age. Their first job is cleaning the cells of the brood nest. Their next job is feeding the larvae. This job follows the development of the young worker bees’ glands that produce the larval food. The queen bee must continue to lay eggs during the early fall in order for there to be workers to feed the brood during next February and March.

An inspection of the bee hive in the late summer and early fall should find a large population of bees. The first indication of the population of the hive is a number of bees on the inner cover of the hive. If the hive is healthy and there is a prolific queen laying eggs, the hive will have bees spilling over the tops of the frames as well. That is the case in the picture of a hive with its large summer population. The majority of these bees will die before the end of winter; only bees born in the fall will be available for feeding the colony’s brood at the end of winter. To ensure that there will be long-lived bees with highly developed food-producing glands, the beekeeper often provides supplemental feeding to encourage the queen to continue laying eggs into the fall.
--Richard

Honey Bees Feed Cattle

The importance of honey bees and insect pollinators for the production of our fruit and vegetable foods is readily seen. At least one third of our diet is dependent upon insect pollinators to complete pollination of the flowering plants as they visit the flowers seeking nectar and pollen. However, the role of the bees in the production of our meats and dairy foods is not quite as obvious. Many of the high-protein food sources for cattle are flowering plants that require bee pollination for seed production. One of the major forage crops for cattle is lespedeza, as shown in today’s photo. A honey bee is collecting nectar from the tiny flowers of trailing lespedeza. I find at least three common species of lespedeza here at Peace Bee Farm. Other cattle feeds that require bee pollination to produce seeds are clover and alfalfa. Each of these forage plants are members of the important bee plant family of legumes. The legumes are important to the bees, because they provide large amounts of nectar and pollen. The bees are important to the legumes, because they need the bees for reproduction.

The legumes provide a sizable amount of the feed required to support the production of meat, milk, and cheese. Not only do the legumes provide food for cattle, they also support considerable wildlife, including animals from rabbits to deer. One of the most important effects of having healthy legumes is that they enrich the soil, because many have nitrogen-fixing bacteria in nodules on the roots. These bacteria take nitrogen from the atmosphere and convert it to a usable state in the soil. As the principal pollinator, the honey bee plays a critical role in our food production and the health of the environment.
--Richard

Cut Comb Honey

European cave paintings showing men risking their lives while climbing cliffs to gather honey while alerted bees circle these determined men holding smoking torches illustrate that man has sought out honey bees to rob their nests for thousands of years. Honey is the only food that we have today that is unchanged from that product of the honey bee that the cave men ate. Until the invention of the removable frame bee hive by Philadelphia, Pennsylvania minister Lorenzo Langstroth in 1851 and the subsequent invention of the honey extractor, all methods of gathering honey were destructive of the colony or the comb. Those robbing bees would usually kill the colony of honey bees with smoke and fire and then remove the combs of honey from the hive. Other men, practiced in robbing bee hives, would use smoke to calm the bees and then gently remove chunks of comb with honey by hand to be eaten. They ate the beeswax comb and the honey. If one wanted to remove the honey from the comb, the comb would be pressed. Even today, pressing the comb is a major method of collecting honey throughout the world.

Long after the invention of the removal frame bee hive there continued a tradition of hunting for bee trees. People would track foraging honey bees throughout the year and follow them back to their nest in a hollow tree. They would usually wait till cool weather, cut the tree to expose the honey bee nest, and remove the honey comb. Following this tradition of collecting honey in the comb, many people enjoy eating their honey this way. Today, most honey is extracted from the combs, and then the frames of comb are stored over winter to be returned to the bee hives for the next year’s honey crop. In the photo Rita is preparing cut comb honey. The combs may be enjoyed on hot buttered biscuits or on ice cream.
--Richard

Honey Bees are Defensive

When beekeepers meet those who don’t handle honey bees, the first question asked is usually, “How often do you get stung?” Many in the public feel that honey bees are to be left alone because they sting. True, honey bees are stinging insects. They belong to the same order as wasps, hornets, yellow jackets, bumblebees, and numerous solitary bees. Generally, honey bees only sting when mashed or while defending their hive. Children learn at an early age that stepping barefooted on bees foraging in clover will guarantee a sting. Also, honey bees will sting any time that we carelessly mash a bee with our hands. Honey bees do vigorously defend their hive from attack from other insects, mammals, and even beekeepers. Carnivorous wasps, hornets, and yellow jackets regularly attempt to enter bee hives. Robber honey bees from other colonies may be the greatest threat to the hive. Hives are also attacked by skunks, raccoons, and, in some areas, bears. Beekeepers are considered an intruder by the bees unless the beekeeper moves gently while manipulating the hive. Beekeepers regularly use smoke to interrupt the pheromone communications of the guard bees. In defense of their hive, the guard bees use their barbed sting, planting it firmly in the skin. Attached to the intruder’s skin, the sting contains a venom sac, muscles to continue to pump the venom, and alarm pheromone glands. The pheromones alert other guard bees and mark the intruder’s location. Stinging an intruder is fatal to the guard bee, but she helps defend the colony by summoning other guard bees to multiply the number of available stings.

When I came across field thistle in bloom, it was during a brief intermission in periods of rain. When the sun broke out, butterflies dropped in to collect thistle nectar. It’s been a rainy summer. Harvesting honey during weather conditions not suited for opening the hives, I found myself the target of guard bees defending their nest. They performed well.
--Richard

Many Flowers Make Honey

Honey varies in color and flavor as a result of the different flower nectars that the honey bees bring into the hive. Honey is often labeled according to its principal nectar source. Florida’s orange blossom, honey is quite popular as is tupelo honey from South Georgia and sourwood honey from Appalachia. Each honey is known for its distinct flavors. These honeys are harvested by removing the honey supers from the hives after the bloom of the citrus, tupelo, or sourwood trees. When we harvest honey, it may have the appearance and flavor of a particular floral source; however, the honey is probably the sum of dozens of different flowers.

In the Arkansas Delta, the principal nectar sources are agricultural crops, mainly soybeans and cotton. However, the Delta honey is made up of numerous wildflowers as well. The diversity of nectar sources adds to the complexity of the flavors of honeys that he hives produce. Having a diversity of plant life is very important for good honey bee nutrition. It insures that there will be a continuous flow of nectar coming into the hive throughout the spring, summer, and fall. A diversity of plants also insures that there will be high-quality protein food for developing honey bee brood. The protein, as well as vitamins and minerals, is contained in the flowers’ pollen. At Peace Bee Farm, we encourage many native wildflowers to grow in open and wooded areas. The bees will choose which flowers to forage according to the amount of sugars in the nectar and the availability of the flowers. Today’s picture shows a common plant in the understory of woods, poison ivy. Poison ivy, a plant with sticky, skin-irritating oil on the foliage, has a delicate flower. At times, honey bees collect nectar from poison ivy and produce good, edible honey. After bee pollination, poison ivy produces berries and seeds which are distributed by song birds. Deer browse the foliage.
--Richard

Morning Glory in Bloom

Morning glory, also called hedge bindweed, is in bloom on vines covering fences and idle farm equipment. The prolific vines cover any object in a sunny area. I found a morning glory vine climbing the rope of our old farm bell, which evidently had not been pulled in a while. The flowers are white funnels with tints of lavender. Visiting morning glory shortly after sunrise finds the blossoms being visited by numerous native pollinators. Honey bees prefer to visit flowers with a more open blossom. Click on today’s picture to see a blue orchard bee approaching a morning glory flower. Blue orchard bees, also called mason bees, are shiny, blue-black in color. They are often mistaken for bottle flies. These gentle and fast flying native bees hit a flower hard, and then scrub their bodies around the inside the flower before zooming off. In the process of scrubbing around inside the flowers, the blue orchard bees cover their bodies with pollen which they carry along to the next flower, very effectively pollinating the plant. While honey bees and bumble bees carry their pollen in pollen baskets on their hind legs, blue orchard bees carry their pollen on hairs on the underside of their abdomen.

The honey bee is the most widely employed pollinator, but our agriculture, food supply, and even our wildlife are healthier if we have a diversity of pollinators available. Having an assortment of native pollinators available within flying range of agricultural crops makes them more productive. To have a diversity of pollinators we need a diversity of flowering plants and habitats. The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation is dedicated to protecting pollinators The Xerces Society offers plans for managing habitat for native pollinators at their web site, http://www.xerces.org/. It is easy for us to provide flowering plants and nesting places for the blue orchard bees. They are useful and enjoyable to have in the garden.
--Richard

Alfalfa in Bloom

Honey bees are of utmost importance in the production of our food. One third of mankind’s diet is dependent upon insect pollinators. Without pollination, these food plants would not produce fruit and seed. Not only do the honey bees and native pollinators help produce our food, they also help produce food for wildlife and farm animals. Alfalfa, considered the world’s most important forage crop for animals, is grown in the Mid-South as a high-quality feed for horses and cattle. The alfalfa plant may be harvested up to five times per year for high-protein hay. Between cuttings of the hay, the alfalfa may bloom and attract honey bees.

Alfalfa is a perennial plant in the important family of bee plants, the legumes. From alfalfa, the bees collect both nectar and pollen. There is one problem that the honey bees encounter in working alfalfa flowers, though. The structure of the alfalfa blossom hides the nectar and pollen from the foraging bee until the flower is physically tripped by a bee. To access the alfalfa pollen and nectar, the bee must press its head against the flower petal until the flower’s male and female parts are exposed. In this process, the flower slaps the bee directly in the face. Understandably, many nectar-gathering honey bees dislike the tripping mechanism of alfalfa. They soon learn to insert their tongues between the petals to remove nectar without tripping the flower. These bees, as a result, don’t pollinate the alfalfa. Pollen-gathering honeybees are effective pollinators, however; because they must trip the flower’s mechanism. Click on today’s photo to see a honey bee negotiating an alfalfa flower. Alfalfa honey is clear to light amber in color with a pleasant, minty flavor. Alfalfa honey has a heavy body and weighs 12 to 13 pounds per gallon while other honeys rarely exceed 12 pounds per gallon.
--Richard