Different Ways to Help Honey Bees

Honey bees are vital for the pollination of many of our fruits and vegetables. Making sure we are all doing our part in helping them survive and grow is very important. 

Honey bee population numbers in the United States have been decreasing over time until about 10 years ago, but the population numbers have remained fairly stable since then. However, there are several things we can do to help honey bee populations.

1. Grow a bee friendly garden:
• Planting garden flowers and native wildflowers are a great source of nectar for honey bees! Some key flowers to plant are bee balm, sunflowers, lavender, goldenrod, and many more! In addition, planting trees, such as maples or black cherries, provide many blooms that support honey bees.
2. Avoid pesticides and herbicides
• Using pesticides and herbicides can be harmful to honey bees and other pollinators. Not using pesticides and herbicides can help honey bees, but if they need to be applied make sure to not apply them when flowers are blooming and do it at dusk or dawn when honey bees are not foraging.
3. Support beekeepers
• Buying honey and related products can be a great way to support honey bees. Another way to support both beekeepers and honey bees is to contact a beekeeper if you see a honey bee swarm. Beekeepers can help provide a safer home for honey bee swarms, which helps everyone out in the end.
4. Be an advocate for honey bees
• Teach others the importance of honey bees and other pollinators and ways they can help. Not everyone understands that honey bees are the number one pollinator in the world and their survival and success is so important!

There are many other ways to help honey bees and other pollinators, but this is a great list to help you get started! Be sure to do your part in helping the survival of honey bees, as they are vital to the pollination of so many of our foods.

Calling a local beekeeper about honey bee swarms
is a great way to help out honey bee populations!

The Swarming Nature of Honey Bees

A swarm of honey bees

Have you ever seen a swarm of bees and wondered what they were doing? Swarms play an important part in the life of a honeybee hive.

Imagine you are a fuzzy little honeybee. You live and work in a beehive with around 60,000 sisters. That’s a lot of siblings! The hive is growing, the queen is laying eggs, and you’re all working hard to make honey. Then one day, you start to run out of room! There’s not enough room to store honey or for the queen to lay more eggs, and there’s not enough room for all of your siblings to fit inside the hive. What are you going to do? Swarm. That’s what beehives do when they run out of room. Half the hive leaves with the queen to start a new home. 

A queen cell with a new queen bee being raised

Before the swarm, you and your siblings start preparing for a new queen bee that will reign when the old queen swarms. A few days before the new queen hatches, it’s time to say goodbye to 30,000 (or half) of your siblings and get ready for your trip. Before you leave, each of you will eat as much honey as you can hold, which makes you kind of slow and not able to sting since you’re SO full. You will need that honey to make beeswax for your new home. Now you’re ready to leave. 

A swarm flying around before they gather on a tree branch

The scout bees give the signal and half of you fly out of your hive, surrounding the queen to protect her. You all circle in the air until the scouts find a good branch on a nearby tree where you gather in a big ball, continuing to surround the queen. It’s almost night time now, and soon it will be too dark to fly. You decide to spend the night on the branch. In the morning, as soon as the sun comes up, the scout bees head out to look for a new home. After a little while, the scouts return and begin excitedly doing special dances to tell everyone that they found a new home! All the bees take flight with the scouts leading the way to your new home. Your new home may be in a hollow tree, an abandoned corner of a barn, or in a beekeepers empty beehive box. 

A beekeeper shakes the swarm into a beehive box

Now, you and your siblings work together collecting nectar and building comb so the queen can lay eggs. Your hive may be small right now, but someday, when this new home is full and buzzing with lots of bees and busyness, it will be time to start the swarm process all over again. But for now, you all work together to build a strong and healthy hive.

The hive is happy in their new home

Now you know what a swarm is! Just remember, you don’t have to be afraid of a swarm, because the bees are so full of honey that they can’t really sting, and they have no home to protect. You should still leave the swarm alone and stay a safe distance away. If you ever see a swarm, leave it be or call a beekeeper. You never want to kill a swarm. A beekeeper can put the bees in an empty hive box where they will start a new home and have a healthy hive. 

Bee Beards

What would you think if you saw a beard made out of live bees? Maybe you have seen a beekeeper do a bee beard at a festival, fair, or other event or you might have seen photos or videos of one. Have you ever wondered how a bee beard works?

Ready to wear some bees!

Bee beards are an amazing sight and a wonderful demonstration of how gentle our honeybees truly are. Bee beards also show us just how important the queen’s pheromones are to the hive, since it is her smell which causes the bees to cluster on the beekeepers face to form the bee beard.

First, a box of bees is prepared as an artificial swarm with the queen contained in a small screened cage. The person who will be wearing the beard is prepared by ensuring any jewelry or hair that would get in the way is contained and that he/she is not wearing any scents which would bother the bees.

Next, the queen cage is tied underneath the chin so that the bees will be able to smell her pheromones through the screen. A box full of worker bees is then shaken out onto a tray or barber cape worn by the person wearing the beard.  

Because the worker bees can smell the queen in the cage, they all climb up and cluster around her and form the beard of bees.

The bees beginning to cluster

Forming a fuller beard 

To remove the bee beard, the queen cage is taken off and then the rest of the bees are removed when the person wearing the beard jumps up and shakes the bees back into their box.

Wearing a bee beard feels electric! It feels funny because of all of the legs clinging to your face and the bees produce a lot of heat. It’s very neat to see how quickly the bees react to the queen pheromone and how gentle they remain throughout the whole process. Wearing a bee beard is an amazing experience and a lot of fun! 

Swarm Season!

It’s June… and you know what that means. School’s almost out for summer! I’ll bet you’re ready to just buzz on out of the classroom and start enjoying your time outside. And that’s just what the bees are ready to do, too! The period of time between mid-May and mid-June is typically referred to as swarm season, because honeybee colonies all across the country are splitting up and dividing in anticipation of summer’s abundance.

 Perhaps you’ve seen a swarm hanging from a branch or clustered on a fence post. You may have felt a little bit scared or uneasy, but don’t panic! The honeybees in that swarm are extremely gentle. They do not want to give up their life to sting you because they are protecting something very special. Deep inside the core of that living ball of bees is a queen bee. The workers surrounding her are protecting her while they send out scout bees to find a new home.

 But why do bees swarm anyway? During the winter, the queen stops laying eggs and the population of the hive decreases until spring. Once the queen begins to lay up to 3,000 eggs each day in the spring time, the hive becomes very crowded. When it is too full, worker bees start to produce queen cells (visit the January blog post for more information on queen cells). At just about the same time that the new queens are due to emerge from their cells, worker bees start to rush around inside of the hive, telling other workers that the time is right, and urging them outside of the hive. Eventually, the queen bee and up to half of her workers leave the hive and settle in a new home. The hive is no longer crowded, and it now has a brand new young queen bee, ready to start laying eggs.

 Many beekeepers keep busy during swarm season catching swarms. Because a swarm is a cluster of bees with a queen, it is very valuable. Due to the gentle nature of swarms, a beekeeper can easily shake the bees into a new hive and then add it to his bee yard. 

 If you see a swarm of bees in your area, don’t be afraid. Just call your local beekeeper as soon as possible. If you don't know a beekeeper, look online to see if you can find a local or state beekeeping club's contact information.  You can also try calling your county's extension office.  Watch the swarm rescue process from a safe distance- you’re sure to bee amazed at what you see!