Beekeeping - An Adventure into the Hives!

Imagine you are a beekeeper, and you are checking your hive! The white wooden hive box is buzzing with bees around the entrance! After removing the lid, you see inside the box, where there are 10 wooden frames. On those frames, the bees are crawling around, seeing who the new visitor is! 

When you pull out a frame, you see the many bees walking across the beeswax with the hexagon-shaped cells. Did you know that honeybees have the instinct to make their comb into hexagons? It’s the best shape for the worker bees to store their honey and pollen in!

On the frame, you also see a bee bigger than the workers with a broader body, large eyes that almost take over their whole head, and doesn’t have a stinger. That is the male drone bee! You see a worker bee feeding the drone with her tongue, which is called a proboscis, since drones cannot feed themselves.

As you continue looking at the frames, you come across one that appears to have tiny rice-grain-like eggs inside the comb, and nearby, you see the queen bee laying them! She has a larger thorax and abdomen, and she lays 1000-2000 brood eggs every single day! She’s a very busy bee! 

All of the worker bees in the hive, the drone bees, and the queen work together inside the hive box, and it is so fascinating watching it happen. You look forward to seeing them again in one to two weeks, where they will have made more honey, collected more pollen, and have brand new adult worker bees!

~Princess Emilia

Spring Food for Honeybees

The spring season is quickly approaching, and with that we will soon hear the chirping of birds and the buzz of honeybees. With the weather warming, and sometimes being unpredictable, this is the perfect time to take up a new hobby of gardening while supporting our buzzing friends. 

If you are planning on supporting honeybee populations, while also taking in the beautiful sunshine, consider planting the list of plants below to ensure the honeybees have something to eat!

Some flowers that are perfect for spring bloom include: 

• Bachelors Buttons
  
• Snowdrops
• Common Yarrow
• Petunias
• Marigolds
• Bee Balm
• Cosmos

All of these plants provide beautiful colors for your garden while also providing a nectar and pollen source for honeybees! You can find seeds and bulbs at your local garden store.

Bee-ing Sick is No Fun!

 As March comes along, so do sneezes and coughs! The flu season has begun, so it’s very important to wash your hands and cough or sneeze into your elbow bend. Just like we get sick, so do honeybees!

Honeybees have many different sicknesses that they can get. They can get viruses and fungal infections. Viruses and fungi are very, very small and can’t be seen by the regular eye. You will need a microscope to see them. A microscope is a tool scientists use to see very small objects, making them look larger.

I am a scientist in my college, and I work on helping honeybees who are sick and making medical treatments for them. I am studying the fungus called Nosema ceranae, more commonly called Nosema. Nosema can cause honeybees to be unable to fly, and in colonies with this infection, you can also see brown droppings on the outside of the hive box.

Viruses are non-living, which makes them different from fungi. This means that they need a living organism to transport them. A living organism that commonly transports viruses in the hive is the Varroa destructor mite, also known as the Varroa mite. One virus that honeybees can get is called the Deformed Wing Virus. This virus makes honeybee wings look crumpled and deformed. This means that the bee is unable to fly.

Honeybees can’t wear masks to help prevent spreading sicknesses in such close living quarters in the hive. But honeybees also have ways to avoid getting sick, called hygienic behaviors! Before a honeybee enters the hive after collecting nectar and pollen, there will be a bee at the entrance who will clean off any “germs” from her that she may have been exposed to. Also, when baby bees called larvae are still growing inside the hive comb cells, if an adult bee smells that a larva is sick, she will remove it from the hive to prevent disease.

More good news is that there are fantastic treatments that scientists are creating to help honeybees. These treatments are then sold to beekeepers so they can treat their colonies with their sicknesses and to control the spread of pests, like the Varroa mite.

Don’t forget to wash your hands, and I hope to “bee” seeing you soon!

~ Princess Emilia

Beauty and the Bee

Honey has many uses, which even include beauty care! As a nature humectant, or moisturizer, which can be perfect for the winter months. This three-ingredient mask will gently exfoliate your face, balance your complexion, and leave your skin feeling soft and fresh.

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup of oats
• 2-3 tablespoons plain yogurt
• 1 tablespoon honey

Steps

1. In a blender or food processor, blend the oats until they're finely ground.
2. In a small bowl, mix together the oats and all the remaining ingredients.
3. Apply to a freshly washed face in a circular motion and leave for 10-15 minutes.
4. Rinse off with warm water and follow with a gentle moisturizer.

You can use the mask once a week, but it's best to make a fresh batch every time.

2025 Representatives Crowned

The American Beekeeping Federation held their 82nd Annual Convention in Reno, Nevada. The new American Honey Queen and Princess have been crowned!

2025 American Honey Queen

Cheyenne Bastian-Brown from Pennsylvania

2025 American Honey Princess

Emilia Burnham from California

Congratulations ladies! They will travel the United States promoting honey and beekeeping and post interesting articles about bees and honey along the way. Keep an eye out for the sweetest representatives in America!

Jobs of a Worker Bee

The worker bee only lives for 5-6 weeks, but they are so busy during this time! In this short period, they will hold a variety of jobs that all contribute to the productivity of the hive.

After hatching, these insects will first be hive cleaners. They work to clear out their cell to make room for a new egg, as well as carrying out dead bees and dirt to make sure the hive is nice and tidy.

They then become nurse bees, helping to feed the larva and take care of the queen. While taking care of the queen, they become “attendants” and help to feed and clean her while she lays eggs. When they do this, they send out a special pheromone scent to alert the other workers that their queen is healthy.

After that, they become pollen packers, where their job is to neatly pack pollen into cells. They also work as wax masons, crafting the wax from the glands in their abdomen. They also contribute to temperature control in the hive, as well as collecting and storing water.

Soon after, these bees will become guards, where they sit at the entrance of the hive to watch for intruders or possible threats. If they see any, they will send out a pheromone scent to the rest of the hive to warn them.

At the end of their life, the workers will go out and forage for pollen and nectar, as well as turning the nectar into honey. When they make honey, they will use their long, straw-like tongue to suck up nectar into their honey stomach. In there, it will mix with a special enzyme and water. Once flown back to the hive, the bee will load this mixture into the honeycomb, then flutter their wings hard to dehydrate the honey down to the sticky substance that is honey!

Buzz buzz there is food over here

 Honeybees do not have ears, but they still communicate with each other. Honeybees communicate in two main ways; they use special chemical scents called pheromones and they also dance!

The queen honeybee gives off a pheromone, this causes all the honeybees in the beehive to smell the same. The pheromone from the queen honeybee helps the guard honeybees check that the honeybees that are coming into the beehive belong in that specific beehive. 

The honeybees also have a warning pheromone that the workers can produce. The warning pheromone tells the other honeybees that there is something dangerous around and then the honeybees will work together to get rid of the danger. 

Credit to Beetanical Apiary

Honeybees have a couple different dances that they use to tell the other honeybees many different things. The most famous of these dances is the waggle dance, this dance is used to communicate where there are food sources outside the beehive. When a honeybee comes back from collecting food, she will start moving in a figure eight and shaking her body back and forth. The direction of her shaking gives the other worker honeybees a map to the food source that she had just returned from.