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.

The Inside Scoop on Beekeeping Tools

 

Happy Spring! As beekeepers are opening up their honeybee hives to prepare for another year of pollination and honey making, let's learn about the handy everyday tools that beekeepers use to check on their hives. Beekeepers across the United States utilize different methods of hive maintenance. Some of which have existed for centuries! There are a variety of ways to keep bees, but generally all beekeepers would agree that there are three vital tools required for going into a beehive. Let's explore the inside scoop on the essential tools of a beekeeper!

Hive Tool

A hive tool is used to separate frames inside a honeybee hive.

Hive tools come in different styles. This is one of the most common.

            First, is one of the most essential tools, the hive tool. The name and current common designs of a hive tool have been utilized for at least a century, which demonstrates the desirability of its' multifunctional use across generations. The main reason beekeepers use a hive tool is because honeybees create a substance called propolis, made from tree resin and beeswax. Honeybees use this to seal up their hive to keep it safe from bad weather and pests. The hive tool allows beekeepers to pry open the hive's lid and separated the frames for inspection. The generic hive tool has other functions as well. Personally, I find new uses for it every day. It may be used as a hammer, a shovel, a nail remover, a crowbar, and of course, a hive beetle squasher. When the tool becomes coated in propolis, it is easy to clean by using another hive tool to scrape it off. Remarkably, this instrument is so useful that there are even travel-sized versions available for beekeeping on-the-go.

           Bee Veil or Suit

Beekeepers wearing a full-body bee suit which protects them from potential stings.

The next essential tool provides protection from stings. Some beekeepers use a cap and vail, which protects the face, along with long-sleeved and pants when working with a colony that they are familiar with. Other beekeepers wear a full body suit with thick layers of mesh that prevent bee stingers from reaching their skin. This is great for inspecting unfamiliar colonies. The downside to this full-body bee suit is that you could be mistaken for a giant marshmallow. However, during the hot summer, the hot weather may have you feeling more like a s'more in these bee suits. To complete the picture, all we need is a campfire, which brings us to the last tool of this inside scoop.

           Smoker

A smoker puffs smoke on the hive to mask alert pheromones.

          The smoker, or as I like to call it, the travel-sized campfire, is used to puff smoke onto the beehive to mask the alert pheromones (which smells like bananas) honeybees may produce when their hive is opened. This way they are more likely to behave calmly, allowing for an easier hive inspection. The smoker requires a flame and some fuel such as grass clippings, cotton, hay, pine needles, or other kinds of fuel that do the trick without harming the bees. It's very important that beekeepers ensure the smoke remains cool to prevent hurting the honeybee's wings. Once you're finished using the smoker, you'll need to scoop out the remaining fuel. Scooping out the remaining fuel can be challenging without the proper tool. That's where the hive tool also comes in handy, with its long, metal stick perfectly suited to the task. Ultimately, a beekeeper's toolkit would be incomplete without the hive tool, protective attire, and a smok
er.

Can you spot all three essential beekeeping tools mentioned earlier in the photo below?

Spot the tools of a beekeeper! 

Benefits of Honey

Honey is a great food that both honey bees and humans consume. Honey bees collect pollen and nectar from flowers that they visit during pollination which they take back to their hive to turn into honey. Honey is primarily made up of sugars and water, with trace amounts of vitamins and minerals. Some of the key vitamins and minerals are: calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, zinc and more!

One way to use honey in addition to consuming it, is using it for wound care. Honey has been shown to speed up the process of wound healing, particularly burn wounds. 

Honey can also be used as a cough suppressant. This is because honey helps thin mucus and loosen coughs. Just taking two teaspoons of honey can help relive nighttime coughs for better sleep and more comfortability. 

Honey also can help various diseases by reducing heart risks, lowering memory loss, and even boosting one's mental health. In addition, honey contains antioxidants, which helps protect the body from inflammation. 

Will You BEE My Valentine?

The world around us is full of amazing relationships between living things that help each other to survive and thrive. One of the most special relationships is between honeybees, flowers, and humans. Honeybees and flowers have a symbiotic relationship, which means they depend on each other to survive and grow. Honeybees help pollinate the flowers by transferring pollen from one flower to another, which helps the flowers grow into fruit and vegetables. In return for pollination, the flowers provide food for the honeybees in the form of nectar, which they make into honey. The health of us humans is dependent on this relationship between honeybees and flowers because pollination is responsible for 1/3 of the food we eat. That is why beekeepers help facilitate this relationship by bringing thousands of honeybee colonies to plants that need pollination. 

Just like how honeybees and flowers help each other, we can also help others in our own way. On Valentine's Day, people often exchange gifts to show their love and appreciation for others. This is a great opportunity for you to think about how you can give to others, just like how the flowers give food to the bees and the bees give pollination to the flowers. For example, you can make a special card or craft for someone you love, give a helping hand to a neighbor or friend, or even donate to a charity that helps people in need. By giving to others, we can help make the world a better place, just like how the relationship between honeybees, flowers, and humans helps us all to thrive. So let's be like honeybees and flowers, and give to others whenever we can! 

Click here to learn how to craft a charming paper bee with this video below. It's a thoughtful gesture to show appreciation for someone special. You could even write a nice note on the back!

School in the Honey Bees' Hive

Have you ever wondered what school would be like in the beehive?

Let me show you how honey bees use math, history, science, and biology to keep their home

organized and travel internationally!

Math 

To build the comb out of wax, honey bees eat about 8 pounds of honey in order to make 1 pound

of wax. The wax cells are in the shape of hexagons that have 6 sides. In these cells, bees can store

nectar, pollen, and brood. The brood are the baby bees that start as an egg and then grow into an adult. 

A queen bee can lay around 2,000 eggs each day! After 3 weeks, those eggs will emerge out of

their cells and join the workforce of the hive, cleaning the hive, feeding the brood, foraging of food, and many other jobs. Each year, 1 hive can produce about 50 pounds of honey. Each worker bee makes

1/12 of a teaspoon of honey in her entire lifetime! 

Science

Honey bees can smell flowers from a few miles away! One way that honey bees communicate is

through smells. In the hive, these smells are called pheromones. Honey bees detect different smells

that help them locate flowers, identify the age of a larva (~4-8 days old brood), and find open cells

of nectar. Worker bees will put the nectar into their honey stomach, add enzymes to it, and dehydrate it

and make the nectar into honey. To preserve the honey, worker bees will make a wax capping for the

cell of honey. Honey does not require any processing before eating, so you can buy comb honey

from many stores.

History

Since the beginning of time, honey bees and honey have been deeply ingrained into human culture. 

Honey bees are the only insect that produces food that humans can eat--honey! Humans have found

many uses for honey including beauty routines, wound care, and cooking with honey. Because of the

bees’ great benefit, the explorers brought beehives with them as they sailed across the ocean to find

new lands. In 1622, the pilgrims discovered the new world, which they later named America.

Whether it's making honey or pollinating flowers that grow into our fruits and veggies, honey bees

continue to serve an important role in our lives.

Biology

The biology of honey bees is different from that of humans. In order to breathe, honey bees have tiny

holes in their exoskeleton. According to Flow Hive, “These valves, called spiracles, are located on the

sides of their body."

Another feature of honey bees is their stinger. Worker bees have a barbed stinger so that they can

defend the colony from predators like bears, skunks, and mice. Since the queen bee’s only job is to

lay eggs, she has a smooth stinger to help establish herself as the only queen bee of the colony.

Since drone bees do not defend the hive, they do not have any stinger! 

Honey bees have 5 eyes: 2 compound eyes and 3 ocelli. The compound eyes allow the forager bee

to see the large grouping of flowers and the ocelli helps the bee see the details of the flower.

What kind of details can she see? Honey bees see the world in ultraviolet (UV) light spectrum,

which means that yellow and purple flowers are brighter and look more attractive to bees while red

flowers look black and unattractive. In the pictures below, the flower on the left is seen as normal

and the picture on the right is the same flower in UV light. Each flower species has its own pattern

under UV light. These patterns on the flowers are called nectar guides and help lead the bee to the

sweet nectar that she is foraging for. With the help of her eyes, honey bees can locate and pollinate

many plants.

How is the Queen Chosen in a Hive?

In a hive of honeybees there are three different types of bees. The have very different, but very vital, jobs they need to complete to make honey and live happily. In a hive, there is only one queen. The queen is different based on a few factors: size, diet, and job. There are important steps that need to be taken for a female bee to become a queen. 

All honeybees are born in cells, the hexagonal holes the bees use to store their honey and pollen. The queen's body holds every egg she ever needs to lay in her life. In a day, she lays about 2000 eggs. In order to create a new queen, the current queen lays an egg in a special cell called the queen cell. The queen cell is larger because the larvae, or the baby bee, growing inside of it will be larger than all of the other bees in the hive. When the new queen is developing, worker bees will feed her royal jelly, a special milky substance that is produced from the glands of a honeybee's head. Royal jelly is full of special proteins that help the larvae in the queen cell grow and develop her reproductive organs that allow her to hold and lay so many eggs in her lifetime. The larvae of the new queen will stay in the cell for about 16 days, until she is ready to be born.

The queen of the hive is the only honeybee that can lay eggs, so when she knows that she may die soon or something is wrong, she will release pheromones. Pheromones are a smell that tell the other bees what's wrong, and instruct them to prepare for a new queen.

Once the new queen is born, she will sting or suffocate the old queen until she passes away. Sometimes there are a few queen cells made, with more than one queen hatching. The first queen to hatch is seen as the strongest to the other bees, so she will take over. All of the other queens have to be killed because the honeybees only accept one queen per hive. Having more than one would confuse them, and too many eggs would be laid everyday, causing overpopulation.

Once the old queen and all the other young queens have been killed, the new queen assumes her responsibility as mother of the hive. She will reign as long as she is healthy. 

Build a Bee Bath

As honeybees are starting to get ready for spring and pollinating flowers, it’s a good idea to start thinking about what we can do to help them. There are 4 things honeybees forage for when going out of the hive: nectar and pollen for food, tree sap to make into propolis (sticky glue to keep the hive clean), and water (because all animals need water to survive). Sometimes it can be hard to find water, and when they do, they also have to worry about drowning. Honeybees need a spot where they can land and drink water without falling in. You can build a small watering hole for bees in your backyard!

Bees also like places with recognizable patterns. Decorating your watering hole with distinct shapes and colors will help the bees navigate back and forth from the water, to the flowers and back to their hive safely. Here are some instructions to make a watering hole for honeybees.

Step 1: Find something for the bees to land on. It can be small rocks and pebbles, corks, styrofoam, marbles or anything you can think of that will give the bees something to land on.

Step 2: Find a container with a wide opening that can hold water. If you are using rocks and pebbles (or something else that sinks), find a container that is shallow. If you are using something buoyant, then any depth of water will work. A plastic bowl, an old and empty pot, and plastic cups are all great options.

Step 3: Decorate your container: Start with a solid color base. Then draw pictures or put on stickers that have simple color schemes. Geometric shapes will work, but if you want to get creative, you can use hearts, clouds, animals or anything with clearly defined lines.

Step 4: Fill it with water and keep an eye out for honeybees and other pollinators to come by for a break.

https://offgridworld.com/protect-your-local-pollinators-with-a-diy-bee-watering-station/

https://offgridworld.com/protect-your-local-pollinators-with-a-diy-bee-watering-station/

Honeybees Throughout History

The buzz about honeybees has been around for thousands of years. Honeybees helped humans in Ancient Egypt, Greece and early America. Rock art shows "honey hunting" in early civilizations in Africa, India and Spain, and organized beekeeping happened in ancient Egypt, Greece, Italy and Israel. The greatest minds throughout history have studied the fascinating honeybee. 

Ancient Egyptians are thought of as the first beekeepers in history. Historians have found hieroglyphs of bees dating back to 2422 BD! The oldest jar of honey found in the world came from the tomb of King Tut. Ancient Egyptians knew that honey was more than just a food. They used honey to clean wounds and to promote beauty and youthfulness in cosmetics. They used bees wax to make candles. Today, people are still using honey and hive products for the same purposes! 

Some of the greatest ideas about honeybees came from Ancient Greece. Before this point in history, most ideas and observations were passed down through oral traditional and stories. The Greeks wrote down their knowledge. One of the most well known minds to study bees was Aristotle around 342 BC. He was not a beekeeper, but that did not stop him from studying bees. Some of his ideas were correct but some of them were not. He knew there were three bees in the hive. He got the worker and drone bees correct, but he thought the queen bee was a king bee! 

Early settlers in America brought honeybees from Europe to North America in 1622. There were native bees already in North America but the colonist introduced domesticated bees. In colonial times, bees were extremely beneficial. Honey was used instead of highly-taxed sugar and beeswax was used for making shoe polishes, lipsticks and candles. The beehives featured on early American coins convey how important honeybees are in our history.

Love and Beekeeping

Happy Valentines Day! Did you know that Saint Valentine is the Patron Saint of Beekeeping? Valentine's Day is all about love and cherishing those around you. This is the same concept Saint Valentine shares with beekeeping. Being the Patron Saint of Beekeeping means Saint Valentine watches over the beekeeping industry, protecting the beekeepers and the honeybees.

This love for beekeeping is still cherished by many today. During winter months in northern states, beekeepers have to provide their bees with extra love to help them survive the winter.  The winter months of the north mean temperatures and snow are constantly falling. Beekeepers either keep their bees in the North or send the honeybees to the warmth of the Southern states.

Wintering in the North

Hives snowed in for the winter

Temperatures in the North can get as low as -30°F or colder. While the temperature of the air outside is that cold, the inside of the bee hive will be as warm as 98° throughout the entire winter! The honeybees are their own heating system. Honeybees will be in constant motion creating heat with their bodies, and then they fan their wings to move the heat around! To ensure the safety and warmth of the queen bee, she is at the center of the cluster of honeybees. 

A common path of states visited by Migratory Beekeepers

Migratory  Beekeeping
Migratory beekeepers move their honeybees throughout the United States to help pollinate crops. A migratory beekeeper might go to California to pollinate almond crops in the winter and then to Washington in the spring to pollinate apple blossoms. Summer could be spent in Wisconsin pollinating cranberries or North Dakota pollinating sunflowers. Migratory beekeepers are always on the move and help advance agriculture from coast to coast! 

Honey's Top Ten for 2018

Happy New Year, Honey! A new year equals a new you, and 2018 promises to be the sweetest yet. Start your year off right with these TOP TEN honey tips and tricks!

TEN
You're going to need a lot of energy to make it a great 2018! Try this recipe for Honey Energy Bars. Honey is often called "nature's perfect energy." Whereas refined sugar simply has empty calories, honey contains small amounts of proteins, enzymes, amino acids and minerals.

NINE
Sadly, it's likely you or someone in your family will get sick this winter. Try this recipe for Honey Cough Syrup to soothe your sore throat.

EIGHT
Homemade slime, putty and play dough is all the craze among young people! Try this easy recipe for Honey Play Dough.

SEVEN
There are more than 300 varieties of honey in the US. It all depends on the flower the bee got the nectar from! Make a goal to try at least two new kinds of honey in 2018. Buckwheat honey is great in BBQ sauces and wildflower honey would be delicious in honey butter!

SIX
When Spring arrives, plant a bee-friendly garden in 2018! Plant native flowering plants like Bee Balm, Blackeyed Susan or Goldenrod, and choose flowers that bloom at various times throughout the growing season so the honeybees will have a continuous supply of food.

FIVE
Honeybees add nearly $20 billion to the value of US crop production through pollination! As honeybees gather pollen and nectar for their survival, they pollinate crops like apples, cranberries, melons and broccoli. Try this pollination experiment that uses Cheetos!

FOUR
Read a book about honey, beekeeping or honeybees in 2018! Check your local library or read one of our favorites: Jump into Science: Honeybees, The Honeybee Man or What if There Were No Bees?

THREE
Use honey to help with your seasonal allergies! By eating a few teaspoons of local honey each day, your body can build up an immunity to the pollens in your area.

TWO
Did you know Cleopatra used to take baths with milk and honey for soft and silky skin? You can, too! Try this recipe for Milk & Honey Bath Melts.

ONE
Start every day out right by eating honey for breakfast! Try spooning some into hot tea, drizzling it on your peanut butter toast or sweetening up your oatmeal.

Most Important Job

What do you think about when you hear the word Pollination? Honeybees are a big part of pollinating one third of the food we eat. Honeybees have a lot of hair on their bodies, and when they are flying the wind is blowing through their hair, which creates static electricity. Then when they land on the flower the pollen will literally hop on their backs because it is attracted to that electricity.  As the bees move from flower to flower, the same process will happen.  Some of the pollen that they already have sticking to their hair will fall off onto the other flowers, which is the process of pollination.

https://vavai.com/2014/02/

Some of the many fruits and vegetables that bees help pollinate are pears, apples, mangos, watermelons, strawberries, green beans, celery, onions, peas, and tomatoes, they also help pollinate coffee! But food is not all that bees pollinate. They also pollinate cotton, and alfalfa, which the cotton we use for clothing and the alfalfa we use to feed our dairy cows. Did you know that almonds are actually 100% dependent on bee pollination and commercial beekeepers will travel with their bees to California to help pollinate the almonds?

http://treefruit.wsu.edu/orchard-management/pollination/honey-bees/    

As you can see there are many different things that bees help pollinate for us. If you really think about it, the next time you are eating a meal, figuratively every third bite you take would be pollinated by bees. Bees are very vital to the human diet and to the environment.