Beekeepers Friend

The question was raised, “How long does it take house bees to graduate into Nursing?” The answer is : I don’t know. According to one source, the first 3 weeks are spent doing household chores. The last 3 weeks are spent in the field force foraging for pollen, nectar, and water. I made a statement that the last tour of duty was undertaker. I still hold to that but, there are some beekeepers who think that when the wings are shredded, the bees simply crawl away to die. If any of you out there know the truth of this, please commet and let us all know.

Now, back to my narrative. The cooks of the hive would be the bees that actually prepare the bee bread out of pollen. they take the pollen from the foraging bee and mix in honey and water, stir the mixture and pack into cells real close to the brood nest. They also mix water with the nectar that the nectar forager places in a cell. Then they start fanning the mixed nectar until the nectar mix has changed to honey. Sort of like, mixing cake mix, eggs, milk, etc. and placing in an oven to bake a cake. When the honey is ripe (about 16% viscosity), the cooks and helpers (more young bees) will cap the honey cell. That is when the honey is ready to eat (humans). At this point, I would guess that the bees are about 2 weeks old. Ready to upgrade to climate control and hive guards.

The life of all honeybees starts as an egg, about the size of a comma “,” which is laid by the queen in the bottom of a wax cell in the brood area of a hive. A worker egg hatches after 3 days into a larva. Nurse bees feed it royal jelly at first, then pollen & honey for 6 days. It then becomes an inactive pupa.The honey comb has hexagon cells on both sides of a vertical central wall. As shown in the photo, these cells are inclined upward, primarily to retain liquid nectar and honey. (This insert comes from Bee Basics by Dr. Richard Iacobuddi.)

The nurse bee is a very young bee, 3 days old, and she is the one to make the royal jelly. This is what she feeds the young bees for a day then she will feed them beebread until they are sealed in their cells.

One of her jobs in the brood nest is to make sure the babies are kept warm, not hot. If too hot, she, along with other nurse bees will fan the babies to cool them down. 94-96 degrees F is the ideal temperature for the brood.

The nurse bees are also the queen’s attendants. They see that she is fed, groomed, and they even dispose of her waste. While grooming her, they receive some of her pheromones and while feeding the other workers and drones, they pass some of this queens scent to them. This is how the colony knows that the queen is still alive and laying eggs. This pheromone has a calming effect on the colony as a whole and the bees keep on doing what they do for the betterment of the colony.

Now that the little house bee is older, it is time to move on to become a cook.

When a new worker bee hatches from her cell, she gets a long drink of honey then, while her wings are drying, she will clean her cell and get it ready for another egg. Then she will join all the other new bees and older housekeepers and clean the hive. They will clean impurities off the walls and floor. They will make sure that the walls have no holes of open splits that let drafts in. If they find an opening, they take some of the sap from a field bee and make propolis, what is known as bee glue, and close up the hole. If there is something too big to remove (animal, bug, twig) from the hive, then the housekeepers will entomb the object with propolis. It will even keep germs enclosed so the hive is protected that way also.

Soon she will upgrade to a nurse bee.

The queen’s only job is to lay eggs. From the time she is mated until the day she dies (up to 7 years), she is the sole propagator of the hive. Without her laying the eggs, the colony will die. During the Spring nectar flow, the workers only live about 6 weeks. About 2500 – 3000 bees are dying each day. The queen has to lay more eggs than this so the hive will grow. 2500 – 3500 eggs a day are needed. During the winter months, the bees live longer (how much longer depends on the latitude of the colony). In the south, the winter is fairly short and warmer than in the north where the winter can last up to 6 months. During this time, the queen only lays a minimum amount of eggs just for maintenance. As the spring grows nearer, she will begin to lay more and more eggs getting ready for the big Spring nectar flow.

I was asked the question, “What do bees do when it rains?” The answer is I really don’t know. But I can make an educated guess.

Bees are like any other small insect when it rains. They are about the same size of hard raindrops. If a drop of water hit a bee with the force of hard rain, it would probably kill her or at least maim her. That would be disastrous for her. If a drop of rain hit a bee with the force of slow rain, it would probably at the most, knock her out of the air and onto the ground, or maybe into a puddle of water with the possibility of drowning. At the least it would get her wings wet to the point of not being able to fly. So I would think that the bees would elect to stay home and help with the central air and heating and other household chores.

Before I tell you any more, here is a link to show you the life cycle of the honeybee. Make sure you know what the bees do in the hive normally. First of all the normal functions are: queen bee (producing eggs for population), nurse bees (caring for the brood), housekeepers (keeps the place clean), cooks (those bees that take the nectar and pollen from the field force and processes and stores them in the wax cells), engineers and laborers (repairs old wax cells and builds new wax cells), climate control operators (heating and air conditioning and humidity control), undertakers (removing the dead adults and trash), and guards (protectors against marauders and robber-bees).

Then there is the field force (the worker bees that goes out into the great open spaces to collect pollen, nectar, and water) that is staying home today because of the foul weather. Its job would be to help out wherever there is a need. Extra bodies mean more heat and humidity. Some of the field bees would undoubtedly help in guarding and controlling the temperature and humidity.

There would be more bees dying at home, so some would help the undertakers in removing the bodies. There would be more mouths to feed, so some would be designated as cooks’ helpers and help feed everyone. As a side note, the cooks also have kitchen helpers who have to mix the nectar with water and enzymes and then they have to fan the mixture to evaporate the water until it turns into honey. I am sure that some of the extra bees would be put to work helping to cure the nectar so that they will have enough honey to feed the multitude of extra bees.

Probably, there would not be enough room in the hive for every bee to be in out of the rain, so some of the overflow would stay outside until they got a chill and then change places with some of the ones inside who by this time are hot and tired of doing something they graduated out of before they became foragers. Sort of like changing of the guards.

If you need more information, let me know and I will try to expand more. Remember, these are only my thoughts. There will nearly always be some beekeeper to say that I don’t know what I am talking about and then there will be another that says he doesn’t know what he is talking about. Read books, talk to beekeepers, extension agents, state bee inspectors, and attend meetings. That is where you will gain most of your information.

Moving bees by the hive can be a backbreaking experience, especially if you are doing it by yourself. I know. I have been there, done that, and got the scars to prove it. I finally broke down and bought a hive lifter (sometimes called Hive Carrier, or Two Man Hive Lifter/carrier). The only problem with it is, I have to find someone willing to go with me to the apiary and brave all the stings because the bees do not really want to be moved.

I do, however, have a friend or two willing to do just that. I even get a new beekeeper to help on occasion just so he or she can get the experience of moving bees and also be able to borrow my lifter for their own hives. Small price to pay for the help I receive.

As you can see in the photo taken from the Bushy Mountain Bee Farm catalog, it takes both of you to move the hive. Just place the tabs in the hand holds, front and back (the lifter is too narrow to go cross ways), and lift. This distributes the weight equally between both workers so you can actually pick up twice as much poundage as you could by yourself. You can even use the lifter to carry only honey supers. It is great when robbing, and really does speed up the process.

I received a call from one of my customers yesterday. She is part of a group of people that cooks with honey. Usually there are six or seven gallons involved. I try not to bottle honey until it is ordered, which means I have to get two five gallon buckets of honey and put them in my honey heater for 2 days, then strain the honey through a paint strainer or cheesecloth. The reason for straining is to remove the little pieces of wax and bee body parts from the honey. I want the pollen to remain in the honey for the medicinal properties.

I like the honey to reach 120 degrees F slowly and keep it there for at least 8 hours and not more than 36 hours. The longer honey is kept heated, the darker it becomes. I don’t want the honey to cook, just to be thin like water so that it will pour through the strainer fast so I can let it set long enough for the air bubbles to rise to the top before beginning my bottling sequence.

I sell the honey for a lower price if the customer has a return gallon jar. If not, then I have to add $5.00 to the price to pay for the jar and lid. It also helps to offset the price to the label.

A side note: You can use any glass container for honey after you have washed and sanitized it. If you use plastic containers, then they need to be new. Used plastic containers usually retains the taste of the liquid that was in the container, ie: milk, citrus juices, cool-aid, etc. This will in turn give the honey a different taste and that will be enough to keep the honey from being “pure honey.” If you mix anything other than honey and comb in the container, it is then considered “adulterated” and is no longer pure honey.

There is an article that suggests a virus coming from Australia is the cause for the Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Seems that the pathogen, Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus, is paralyzing the bees or at least weakening them to the point of death, that the bees are dying outside of the hive.

The bee packages, or the queens, that are imported from Australia, are bringing the pathogens in. The bees in Australia are not affected by the virus. Since there are no Mites in that country, it could mean that the bees are healthy and can combat the disease on their own. The mite infected bees have diminished immunity and are susceptible to the infection.

If this is the case, then it should be a short time to the cure. (My thoughts on the subject). I could be wrong and it will take a long time to find the cure. Having said that, this is the best most different reason in a long time for CCD. It is much better than blaming the cell phones and cell phone towers.

I hope that the Federal Bee Labs are on top of this new theory.

I sometimes get called upon to go and talk/teach students about honey bees. This time I was to talk to the kindergarten class at a private school. Since I did not have an observation hive, I needed to take a video with me to show the little ones moving bees.

I got there at the appointed time and took my equipment inside and got everything set up. To speed the process up, I usually take a loaf of crust-less Ironkids bread and, with a knife I supply, have the teacher quarter the slices and be ready to pour a little honey, which I supply, on the squares so the young people can have a taste of honey at the proper time.

This time I did not have the loaf of bread to offer. But, the teacher did. Hallelujah, maybe something will go right for a change. I asked her to put the video tape in the player so it would be ready.

I started off by signing my name in Deaf Sign Language. Then, in Spanish, I asked if anyone spoke Spanish. I followed up by asking the same question in French and German. All this was to get their attention. Sometimes you have to ad-lib to get in the groove. I definitely had their attention. By the way, that is the only words I know in French and German. I then started asking them to tell me what they knew about the honey bees. ‘Stings, boys are called drones, make honey, there is a queen, and drones, and girl bees.’ Pretty typical answers.

Then I tell them about the combs made from wax, show them pictures and a frame of comb that was started, tell them about the nurse bees, housekeepers, a/c and heating bees, guards, and foragers. I then asked the teacher to turn the video on and part of the video has been erased. Ohhh! nooo! I just thought it had stopped raining. Now I had to fill in another gap. Not to worry though, I still had my bee suit, vale, and hard hat.

After I had trouble of getting my vale on, I had very little problems. The rest of the class was great. I had them to stand up and fold their little hand into the armpits and flap their little wings and make a humming sound to show a contented hive, then flap harder and make a zz zz zz zz zz louder sound to show an unhappy hive. We then did a bee dance by going in a line around the room and weaving in and out of tables so they could feel like bees showing where the flowers were.

They learned about the drones dating the queens and beeing so happy that they flew off into the woods and died. They were told that the drones were kicked out of the hives in the wintertime and starve to death. I told them about pollination and what the bees did for their watermelons and fruits. About that time the teacher said that we were getting into the children’s snack time. That was when we did another bee dance and the head scout (me) showed them food and they all got a piece of bread with honey to eat with their snacks that they brought from home. I left them some coloring books about Florida’s insects. I told them they had to color the bee in that book and put the pictures so they could be admired. Said our goodbyes and I left. Great class!

I must tell you that when things go wrong, they seem to do it all together. When I didn’t have any bees for my observation hive, I thought that that was the end of my problems. It wasn’t. I had a workshop committee meeting about 25-30 miles away in Robertsdale, AL. and I was to pick up one of my committee members on my way. I first had to jump my Dodge Ram using my wife’s jumper cables and her car. I stopped and picked up my friend and we went on to the meeting. As soon as we got there and I turned off the engine, the dome lights went really dim. I tried to start the engine and nothing happened and the dome light went off completely. Now I know that I have a dead battery. Only my alternator was keeping the electric equipment going.

After the meeting, one of the other members gave me a jump. Good thing I kept my wife’s jumper cables. No one else had a set over there.

This morning, I jumped the truck using my wife’s car just as she was leaving to go to work. I let it idle until I got my empty brood box and super loaded. I still had that class to go to. I also had to buy a battery before I went to the class.

I drove to the mechanic’s place of business about 4 miles out of my way and he did a superb job of replacing my battery with a new one. My battery was two and a half years old. I also found out that the mechanic did not charge me for that battery. There was no rebate coming back and I was to pay the full price. However, he told me to go on to my class and we would settle up later.

I made the school and that was when I discovered my cell phone was missing. I have this band that goes around my arm just below the elbow. I clip my phone case to the band. I know that I had the phone in the plastic harness when I got dressed this morning. I didn’t discover the phone gone until I got to class, so I lost it somewhere between home and the mechanic’s, or between the mechanic’s and the school.

Anyway, I had the class and the young ones had a ball with my talk and interaction with them. In fact, the teacher had to remind me that I had gone into their snack time. I’ll give details later on this week.

I got back to the mechanic’s to see what the damage was going to be to my pocketbook. While I was there, I had pulled my reading glasses out of my pocket and and laid them on the desk so I could get my credit card out of my pocket. At this time, he said that he didn’t have time to get my money so come back later. I think this is how he forgot to ask for his money the last time. I went home and that was when I discovered my reading glasses were missing. I looked for my phone and even called it several times. I didn’t hear it anywhere, in the house, in the back yard where my empty equipment is stacked, and in the shop where I store my foundation-ed frames. I couldn’t hear it anywhere.

I went back to the mechanic’s shop to get my glasses and pay my bill. He said that he will call me when he get all the paperwork done. When I got home, my wife had just come in from work and asked me if, while I was at the meeting, did I put the phone on vibrate like I usually did at a meeting. That was when it dawned on me that that was why I couldn’t hear it ring. In the morning I will go outside and get on my hands and knees and crawl through the weeds and look for that blasted phone and then I will weed eat and mow the back yard down so I can see what is buried there. I think I have procrastinated again.