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

Home Sweet Home and The Beeswax Builders

             The houses we live in provide protection from weather and the outdoor elements as well as a safe place for us to sleep. In contrast, honey bees must put on their construction hats and build their own home. Once honey bees find a safe spot to build their home such as inside a tree or in a hive box, they start building their walls out of a special material called beeswax. These walls are not only their home but also a storage space for honey and other important things.

Honey bees storing honey in their hive made of beeswax.

Worker bees that are 6-7 days old develop their 8 wax glands within their abdomen. These glands allow them to produce and secrete beeswax in the form of fragile flakes. Next, the worker bees peel off these flakes and chew them using their mandibles. This allows them to stick the beeswax to a surface and mold it into their favorite shape with six sides-- the hexagon. Each individual hexagon is called a cell.  Hexagons are honey bees’ favorite shape because they use the least amount of beeswax to allow for the most amount of space inside each cell.  The hexagons collectively serve important purposes within the hive.

Worker bee producing beeswax flakes from her abdomen.

The shape of a hexagon has 6 sides.

                                         

 

This clever construction of hexagon cells made of beeswax allows the honey bees to store their precious foods such as nectar, honey, or pollen. Additionally, the queen bee lays a single egg in each of these cells around 2,000 times a day, ensuring the growth of the colony. The walls of a bee hive are super close together. They leave just enough space for one or three bees to fit in between. This special arrangement helps the honey bees control the temperature inside the hive easily. Ultimately, honey bees are very resourceful and are remarkable mathematicians, engineers, and scavengers!

Beeswax walls close together help honey bees regulate the temperature of the hive.

What do Bees Eat?

Did you know that honeybees eat more than just honey? They eat a couple different types of food to stay healthy and have energy to work!

Of course honeybees eat honey! They make it from nectar, the sugary substance flowers make to invite the bees to visit. The honeybees gather this nectar to make into honey. You can learn about how honeybees make honey in our past post called “How Do Honeybees Make Honey?” The honey they eat is the source of carbohydrates and gives them energy. Did you know that honey is a good energy source for humans too!

The pollen baskets are packed full!

Honeybees also eat pollen (a powdery substance flowers make) for their protein. They mix the pollen with nectar and pack it onto their back legs into their pollen baskets. They then carry the pollen home to feed to the brood (baby bees). This pollen keeps the honeybees healthy so they can fight off infection in the hive and help the baby bees grow big and strong.

The milky substance inside the cells is royal jelly.

Royal jelly is a milky, protein rich substance that the honeybees feed special eggs to make them become a queen bee. If the egg wasn’t fed royal jelly then it would become a worker bee, but when an egg is fed the special food it supercharges their development so that they are able to lay eggs and become a queen bee. Royal jelly is made from glands in the bees’ head. Some people like to eat royal jelly because it has so many healthy proteins in it. While it doesn’t turn you into a queen bee it can be a great way to keep yourself healthy.

Lastly, honeybees drink water. All living animals need water and honeybees are no different. They look for slow moving sources of water because honeybees can drown. Pollinating and collecting nectar is a hard job and the worker bees need somewhere safe to land to take a drink of water. We wrote back in February about how you can build your own bee water bath!

Bees Like to Clean

This is what propolis looks like in a beehive.
It glues the frames together and seals all cracks.

Do you know the first thing a female honeybee does when she is born? She crawls out of her honeycomb cell, turns back around,  and begins cleaning. Honeybees like to keep their home clean. Have you ever heard it said honeybees keep their hives cleaner than a hospital? They do this through their use of propolis and cleaning each other.

Propolis is made of sap from trees mixed with beeswax and enzymes (special substances which give cleaning and medicinal properties). Beekeepers like to call it “bee glue” because it is a sticky substance the honeybees use to seal up cracks so no dust or debris can come in the hive. Just like a lot of the other products of the hive, propolis has cleansing properties. It cleans the air and any substance it comes in contact with. In fact, the air is so clean that it is considered sterile.

This nasal spray has propolis in it to boost
your immune system.

Just like honeybees love propolis for cleaning, a lot of medicine companies like to make cough drops with propolis. You can also find propolis in tinctures (propolis in liquid form that you can take a drop of if you’re getting sick), lip balms, toothpaste, mouthwash, and nasal spray. You can use propolis just like the honeybees do to stay healthy!

The second way honeybees keep the hive clean is through their behavior. If a hive is infected with a disease, the worker bees will remove everything infected and it will not be allowed back inside the hive. This is especially important to prevent spread of diseases. Once they remove it, they clean everything again with propolis. The honeybees even help clean each other and the queen to keep the hive as clean as possible. 

These bees are cleaning off a bee who came 
home from a day foraging.

By using propolis and having careful behavior, honeybees keep the hive extremely clean. 

The Honeybee’s Life in the Hive

Have you ever wondered how the thousands of honeybees in a hive understand each other and know what to do during their lifetime? Each honeybee has a specific job, and they all know exactly what to do. There are three types of bees in a hive: the queen, the drone, and the worker bee. There are about 40,000 to 80,000 worker bees in the hive, about 1,000 drones and one queen. Let’s focus on the worker bee and what she does in the hive.

The worker bee is the smallest bee in the hive, and they are females. She is the one that you see outside, pollinating flowers as she collects nectar and pollen. The worker bee also does all of the work inside the hive. She begins with cleaning out the cell she emerged from, and then moves around the hive cleaning up any debris, extra wax, leaves, dead bees, etc. They are very clean insects!

After this, the worker bee becomes a nurse bee by feeding the larva “bee bread,” which is pollen and nectar mixed together. Then, she becomes a part of the queen’s court and helps take care of the queen bee. The queen is busy laying up to 2,000 eggs a day with no rest, so the worker bee feeds her and grooms her. Next, she will move out to the entrance of the hive box where she becomes a guard bee. In the event that something creates danger for the hive, she will let off a scent that is called the alarm pheromone and alert the other bees of the danger. 

In the summer time, it can get very hot with the sun shining on the hive all day. Honeybees keep their hive around 94° to help the larva and pupa grow strong and healthy. They stand in the front of the hive and fan their wings to make the air in the hive circulate and cool down the interior. During winter months, they will vibrate their bodies to warm the hive.

Worker bees have eight wax glands on their abdomen. After eating honey, they can draw the wax out of their wax glands in little flakes. They gather the wax with their mandibles and mix saliva into it to make it more pliable. They use wax to form cells for storage of eggs, pollen, nectar, and honey.

The last job that the worker bee has is foraging. She communicates with her sisters using a bee dance. She vibrates and moves around in little circles which tell the other bees where the flowers are located. Bees forage for four things: water, propolis, nectar, and pollen on flowers. Honeybees have two stomachs—one for eating and one to put the nectar into called a honey sac.  While the nectar is in the honey sac, she will add three types of enzymes into the nectar. These enzymes are what causes honey to never spoil. She then puts the nectar into a cell where she uses her wings to dehydrate it and thicken it into honey. Then, she caps over the cell full of honey with wax to keep it clean. Honeybees store plenty of honey for their food throughout the year, as well as plenty to share with humans.

I am very grateful for honeybees. They teach us many things about life.  Watching them do all of the many different jobs both inside and outside the hive is amazing. They know how to keep the hive running smoothly, they cooperate and communicate and work very hard. Each bee is needed, or the colony would not survive. Honeybees are amazing insects!

Can Honeybees Talk?

Animals communicate in many different ways. Some communicate through touch, while others use sounds or smells. With between 20,000-80,000 honeybees per hive, have you ever wondered how honeybees communicate? A hive of honeybees works together so seamlessly and instinctively--their communication process is fascinating! Honeybees communicate using three different methods: dance, vibrations, and pheromones. 

The honeybee uses several different types of dance. One of the dances is called the waggle dance. You can see an example of the waggle dance below. After the honeybee comes into the hive with a full load of nectar and pollen, she uses this dance to tell her sisters what she has found and where it is located. The worker bee will face a certain direction and wiggle at a certain speed during the dance. This will share with the other honeybees the direction of the nectar source, how far it is, and how many honeybees need to go there to collect the nectar. The other bees then follow her directions and find the flowers to forage for the hive. Another dance they use is called the round dance, which tells the bees that the flower source is close to the hive. 


The honeybee also communicates through vibrations and pheromones. Honeybees vibrate their bodies and let off certain smells which tell the other bees in the hive what needs to be done. The queen will send a scent to the queen’s court if she needs to be fed or groomed. She is constantly communicating with the worker bees through vibrations and smell. The worker bees will also communicate to other worker bees if the baby bees need to be feed or if the hive needs to be cooled. By vibrating and letting off pheromone smells, the other bees know exactly what is needed throughout the dark and crowded hive. 



Even though honeybees cannot talk like you and me, they are still able to communicate beautifully. It’s remarkable to see them use dance, vibrations, and pheromones to live in harmony and work together. What an amazing insect!

Honeybees Need Your Help

Here are five things you can do to help the honeybee.

1. Plant bee-friendly flowers in your yard
There are many flowers that bees really like and we call these ‘bee friendly flowers.’ Bees need flowers to survive. Flowers produce pollen and nectar. The bees collect the pollen to eat for themselves and to feed to their babies back home. Pollen is the bees source of protein, just like you and I need protein to grow healthy and strong, bees need protein as well. Nectar is the bees carbohydrates. Carbohydrates give the bees energy to do all of their many jobs. Honeybees also use the nectar to make honey! You can help provide the bees with food by planting flowers in pots or in your yard for the bees to come and collect pollen and nectar! 

Bees drinking water

2. Make sure the bees have plenty of water
Just like most creatures on earth, bees need water. Water helps to keep the bees hydrated. You can help the bees by creating a little spot for them to come and get clean water to drink. Pour water in a small bowl and add rocks or sticks to the water so there is a place for the bees to land so they don’t drown. Providing the bees with water is a great way to help!

3. Buy local honey

Local honey for sale

You can support beekeepers by buying local honey. Beekeepers work hard to keep their bees alive and healthy so that they can pollinate our food for us. Many times when the bees make honey, the beekeeper will sell that honey to make money to keep taking care of his/her bees. So you can help the honeybee by supporting and buying honey from a beekeeper in your area!

4. Become a beekeeper
Yes, you can be a beekeeper! Beekeepers are all different ages. So whether you are a young kid or a grown adult, you can start keeping bees. The first step to being a good beekeeper is learning as much as you can about honeybees. There are classes and books that will teach you all you need to know to start your own beehive. Starting your own bee hive is a very fun way to help honeybees! 

Kids who started beekeeping

5. Teach others what you know
Lastly you can teach your friends and family what you know about honeybees. You can teach them how important they are to our food supply and to our environment. You and your friends can plant flowers together, or make bee watering spots, or even enjoy eating honey snacks together all while helping the honeybee thrive. 

Honeybees are amazing creatures and they need your help!  

Honeybees Vs. Bumblebees

Honeybees and bumblebees are often confused for one another. Both types of bees are frequently seen outside visiting flowers, and their comparable appearances leave many people wondering what type of bee they have spotted. Fortunately, with a little information, anyone can quickly learn to tell the difference between honeybees and bumblebees.

Appearance

Honeybees and bumbles bees have some similar characteristics, but their differences make it easy to tell them apart. Both types of bees are insects and therefore have three main parts to their bodies; The parts are the head, thorax, and abdomen. In addition, both types of insects have four wings and six legs. However, whereas honeybees have slim bodies, bumblebees have much thicker bodies. In addition, bumblebees have much more hair than honeybees. One of the easiest ways to tell a bumblebee from a honeybee is through color. Bumblebees often have black and yellow stripes covering their bodies, and honeybees show dark brown and golden brown stripes.

Stingers

A Honeybee Stinger Stuck in the Target

Female honeybees and female bumblebees both have stingers they use for defense. In both groups, the male bees do not have stingers. Honeybee stingers have a barb on the end, and when a honeybee stings, the stinger gets stuck in her target. When she flies away, the stinger, along with her intestines, get ripped out of her body. She dies shortly after. For this reason, a honeybee can only sting once. The stinger of a bumblebee is slightly different because it is smooth. A bumblebee can sting without losing her stinger, and therefore can sting multiple times. However, both types of bees are gentle and will not sting unless provoked.

Living Arrangements

Both honeybees and bumblebees are social insects and have queen, drone, and worker bees. However, bumblebees live in groups of only about 50 to 400 bees, and honeybees live in a group of about 40,000 to 60,000 bees. Another difference occurs during the winter. In a honeybee hive, the queen bee and many of her daughters live throughout the winter in the hive. They eat honey and flex their muscles to generate heat. In contrast, only queen bumblebees survive through the winter, and they do so by hibernating in a hole in the ground.

Bumblebee Nest

Honeybee Nest

Honey

Honeybees create a surplus of honey that can be collected by beekeepers and sold. Bumblebees create only a small amount of a honey-like substance that is not collected by humans. Both types of bees gather the nectar used to make honey by visiting flowers. Honeybees prefer open flowers because they have short tongues. On the other hand, bumblebees have different lengths of tongues depending on their species and therefore feed on many different shapes of flowers.

Honeybees and bumblebees are both gentle creatures with small, fuzzy bodies. They can easily be identified through their appearance, and have many differences in the ways they live their lives. Both honeybees and bumblebees are important for the environment and should be loved and appreciated for their work.

Bee Sense

Have you ever wondered what the world would look like if you were an insect? In your everyday life, you use your five senses (taste, touch, hearing, smell and sight) to learn about the world around you. An insect’s body works differently from yours and that changes the way they learn about the world around them.

Front view of a proboscis 

Taste: A bee’s sense of taste depends on receptors in her antennae. She can tell the difference between bitter, sweet, salty, and sour. If she likes the taste, she will extend her proboscis and begin to feed.

Touch: A bee’s sense of touch is similar to a human. They often use their antennae to measure cells and also touch each other during bee dances.

Hearing: Although most insects do not have ears to hear, they are able to “hear” sound around them because of the vibrations in the air. A bee is covered in very sensitive hairs which alert her to vibrations in the air. Worker bees can “hear” a scout bee buzzing as she tells them where food can be found.

A honey bee releasing pheromones to guide other bees home

Smell: Honeybees use chemical smells called pheromones to communicate with each other and identify bees that belong in their hive. A honeybee does not have a nose; instead, she uses special receptors in her antenna to decipher what pheromones are around her.   

Sight: Unlike humans, honeybees 

Comparison of human and bee visible light

have compound eyes with thousands of individual light receptors. This means that instead of seeing the world as one picture, bees see many individual dots of color placed together. It is similar to the way a television screen projects a picture. A honeybee’s compound eyes also see a different color range than humans, making it difficult to see red but allowing them to see ultraviolet light. A honeybee also has three additional simple eyes located on the top of her head. A bee cannot use these simple eyes, called ocelli, to see color. They can only see the difference between dark and light with these eyes which helps bees navigate.

Bees are amazing insects with very intricate bodies. They perceive the world differently than we do and use their senses to keep their hive happy and healthy.

The Language of the Honey Bee

Honeybee dancing is an intriguing topic. The dances of the honeybee are performed when a worker bee returns to the honeycomb inside the hive with pollen or nectar. These dances make up a language that tells other worker bees in the hive where the food is located outside the hive. By signaling both distance and direction with specific movements of the bee, the worker bee uses this language of dance to direct other workers on where to forage for pollen and nectar. 

Distance and direction of the floral source are told in two parts of the dance. 

To convey distance, the worker bees do a few different signals. When the food source is close to the hive, or less than 50 meters away, a forager will perform a round dance. The circle dance is when she runs around on the honey comb making narrow circles and then suddenly reverses direction to her original course. They can repeat the dance several times while running across the comb and may move to different spots on the honey comb to convey the message. After the dance, the worker will share some food with the other foragers following her so they can also locate the flowers by smell. A round dance overall says, “close to the hive.”

Food sources that aren’t as close to the hive or are between 50 and 150 meters from the hive are portrayed to the other worker bees using the sickle dance. This dance is what could be described as crescent shaped and is a mix of the round dance and the waggle dance. The waggle dance is to convey that food sources are more than 150 meters from the hive. This dance not only tells the other foragers distance, but also lets them know the direction of the floral source. A worker bee performing this dance runs straight ahead for a short distance, returns in a semicircle to the starting point of the dance, runs again through the straight course, them makes a semicircle in the opposite direction to make a figure eight circuit (NY State University). While completing this circle, the bee’s body, especially the abdomen, shakes or wags vigorously from side to side (To watch the waggle dance check out this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUCoLeI5Qxg). She also lets out a buzzing noise from her wings beating during the dance. While many variables in this dance refer to distance (dance tempo or duration of buzzing sounds), the most reliable part of the dance is the straight-run portion. As the distance to the food increases, so does the length of the waggle part of the dance. If the distance to the food decreases, so does the waggle portion of the dance. 

To help show the direction of where the food is outside the hive, honeybees will change the position of their dance. The orientation of the dancing bee during the straight portion of her waggle dance indicates the location of the food source relative to the sun. The bee takes the solar angle of where the food source is located and turns it into the gravitational angle to convey in the dance where the food is located. Since the sun changes place in the sky throughout the day, the bees dance will change throughout the day even for the same floral source because they use the sun to tell the other bees, using geometry, where the food is. Therefore, if you want to know where the honeybees are communicating to forage, you need to know the angle of the waggle run and the compass direction of the sun, which depends on the location, date, and time of day. 

If you're interested in where I learned about honeybee communication, check outhttp://www.cals.ncsu.edu/entomology/apiculture/pdfs/1.11%20copy.pdf by NY State University andhttp://ag.arizona.edu/pubs/insects/ahb/lsn14.html by University of Arizona.

Bees on the Move

All over the world, beekeepers keep honeybees in hives so that they can harvest delicious honey and have their gardens and crops pollinated by this industrious insect.

Beehives on a roof

There are approximately 200,000 beekeepers in the United States who keep from one to thousands of bee hives. Most of these beekeepers are small-scale, meaning they only keep a few hives of honeybees for themselves. Often, these beehives are kept in a backyard, on a porch, or even on a rooftop! A few beehives is enough for these beekeepers to pollinate their own land and produce honey for their family.

Commercial beekeepers keep hundreds or even thousands of honeybee hives for commercial use. Keeping this many honeybees is a full-time job, and commercial beekeepers depend on their honeybees for all of their income. Commercial beekeepers will produce large amounts of honey to bottle and sell, rent their hives to growers for pollination, raise honeybee hives to sell to new beekeepers, or sell other products produced by the honeybees.

Migratory beekeeping is a special type of commercial beekeeping. Beekeepers who “migrate” move their honeybee hives all across the country so that the honeybees can pollinate crops. Pollination is the fertilization of plants necessary to produce nuts, fruits, and even seeds. For a plant to be pollinated, the pollen grains need to be moved from the stamen (the male part of the flower) to the pistil (female part of the flower) so that fertilization can occur. There are many different animals and insects that pollinate plants. Bats, wasps, butterflies, and of course honeybees are all important pollinators. Honeybees are especially good pollinators because pollen is their primary source of protein. As they travel from flower to flower collecting pollen to eat, they pollinate our crops.

A full truck of beehives

Pollination is the single most important service that honeybees provide for us, and migratory beekeepers are responsible for large portion of that! Moving hundreds of beehives across the nation isn’t easy, so migratory beekeepers have to plan and prepare plenty of time in advance. The honeybees are moved at night after the foragers have returned to their hive so that honeybees will not be left behind. To ship the honeybees, the beekeepers load the hives onto large flatbed trucks (450 hives per truck!), and the bees are then driven to crops which need to be pollinated.

Hives in the California almond groves

A migratory beekeeper may bring their hives to pollinate the almond groves in California, the blueberries in Maine, the Cranberries in Wisconsin, and many other crops throughout the country! Because of their role in pollination, honeybees create every third bite of food we eat-- even if the food doesn’t have any honey in it. So the next time you eat a handful of almonds or bite into a juicy apple, remember to thank the honeybees who pollinated it for you! 

Hive for Rent: Parts of a Beehive

When most people think of beekeeping, the first things they think of are white boxes sitting in a big green field. Would you believe that those hives actually have 8 or more different parts to them? Just like your house, bees have different “rooms” and entrances to their home. Let’s take a look at some of those parts and how they are used! 

Hive Stand: The hive stand is on the very bottom of the hive. It is a short wooden box that is used to keep the hive off the ground. Some of them even have an angled landing ramp for the bees to land on to get into the hive.

Hive stands can help the bees stay warm in the winter by
Keeping warm air trapped under the hive!

 Bottom Board: There are a few types of bottom boards, but the most common is a solid bottom board. It is used as a tray to catch any dead bees or leaf litter that comes into a beehive. It also helps keep the hive warm in the winter by sealing off the bottom of the hive from the ground. 

Some bottom boards have screens on the bottom so they stay cooler in the summer,
and also to keep any dead bees away from the other bees!

Entrance Reducer: A small piece of wood, plastic, or metal is called an entrance reducer. Beekeepers use it to keep robbers out in the springtime when a colony is weak and to keep mice out in the winter.

The entrance reducer has several different size openings it can be set to!

Deeps (Hive Bodies) and Supers: The white boxes where beekeepers keep their bees are called hive bodies. They are kind of like the outside walls of your house. Deeps are the larger boxes that the bees fill up first. The deeps are where all the new baby bees are born and also where the bees will store honey for the winter. Supers are where bees store the extra honey that beekeepers harvest from the hive. Supers are smaller than deeps because honey is very heavy, and smaller boxes are easier to lift. Still, a small super with frames full of honey can weigh 30-40 pounds!

Hives can be a large variety of colors, no just white!

Queen Excluder: This is a very special screen beekeepers put in between the deeps and supers to prevent the queen from traveling into the supers to lay eggs. The screen is a special width so only worker bees can fit through. The queen excluder ensures there is only honey in the supers.

Queen excluders can be made from metal or plastic!

The foundations can also be black
which makes the eggs easier to see
when a beekeeper is looking a the frame.

Frames: Frames are what beekeepers put inside of the deeps and supers where the bees build out their comb. Each frame is like a little room in the bees’ house. There are 8-10 frames in each box, and each one has foundation on it. The foundation is a thin sheet of plastic or beeswax with a hexagon pattern for the bees to start building out their comb. Did you know that bees naturally build their comb in a hexagon-shaped pattern? They are very smart and never waste space!

Beekeepers can put bucket feeders full of syrup on top
of the hole in the center of the inner cover!

Inner Cover: The inner cover goes on the top of the highest box. It has a hole in the center so bees can climb through. Sometimes, beekeepers put a feeder full of sugar syrup over the hole during late fall or early spring to serve as a food supplement.

There can be very fancy outer covers too!
Some look like roofs on a house. They
are very popular among gardeners!

Outer Cover: Similar to a roof, the outer cover telescopes over the inner cover and the top box. They are usually covered with metal to make sure rain and snow don't get into the hive. 

There are many other pieces of equipment that advanced beekeepers use, but these are the really important things that most beekeepers use. Can you relate each part of the hive to a part of your house?

Diseases of the Hive – Honeybees get Sick just like we do!

I think everyone can remember a time when you were sick, and you had a parent, grandparent, or friend take care of you to help you get better. Beekeepers take care of their honeybees when they get sick, just like when someone took care of you! Today, I’m going to talk about different honeybee pests and diseases.

This hive as a jar of sugar syrup to make sure the bees
have enough food. 

One way honeybees get sick is when they get a virus. Viruses are a lot like a cold. There’s not much beekeepers can do to treat them; rather, they just try to keep their hives healthy to avoid them. Beekeepers can try to keep their honeybees healthy by making sure they have plenty of honey, pollen, and water, and they can make sure their hive is prepared for the cold winter months. Beekeepers keep a close eye on their bees for any signs of disease, but sometimes even beekeepers who have been keeping bees for many years still have beehives that get sick. One very common pest in the hive is called a mite.

This is a close up picture of a mite.
It's usually only the size of a tip of a
needle. 

The mite is a parasitic insect that is very tiny – only about the size of a tip of a sewing needle. The mite attaches itself to the honeybee and sucks its blood. Eventually, there are so many mites in every hive that they weaken the colony, and if it isn’t treated, the colony may die. When many of the bees have been attacked by mites, the adult bees in the hive become too weak to take care of the brood. Think of it this way: if your mom and dad were sick, it would be much harder for them to care of you. Thankfully, beekeepers can reduce the number of mites in a beehive by using medications or special equipment.

 A close up picture of a mite on the honeybee's back. 

There are many other diseases that affect honeybees. Beekeepers try to keep their honeybees healthy and avoid disease. It’s important to us, too. Since honeybees get sick, it’s important for us to help the beekeepers who care for the honeybees that pollinate so much of the food that we love. If you want to help honeybees you could plant some honeybee friendly flowers, buy local honey from a beekeeper, or even tell a friend how important they are for us.