The Bee Page

Beekeeper Mark came one evening to put on the hive super, a smaller box that sits on top of the brood boxes where the bees will fill the frames with honey. Mark very slowly lifted the lid of the hive, inch by inch so as to not startle the bees, and we peeked inside to check their progress and their wellbeing. Hundreds of bees were slowly milling about between the frames and on top of the lid, and luckily we seemed to have not caused a commotion. The frames near the edges of the hive had a few capped combs, signifying that the bees had begun to fill them with honey. This is one of the signs a beekeeper looks for before adding a super. Mark topped the open hive with the 9-frame super and we watched the bees slowly begin to explore this new space. The bees flying around the hive were emitting the same low hum as they were before we interrupted them, a good sign for us, because a higher pitched erratic hum would have signaled stressed out bees ready to sting. Mark pointed out the bees bringing back pollen to the hive, which looks like large pollen sacs attached to the back of the bees legs. The pollen goes towards feeding larvae bees. Other bees bring back nectar which we cannot see because it’s held in an internal pouch. Nectar will go towards making the honey. Around mid-July we will open the hive again and check the super for capped honey-filled combs!

The hive 'super' where honey will be stored

“The ancients believed that a flower’s nectar came directly from heaven. Drops of firmament fell into waiting cups and bowls made of petals or were placed there by deities like Iris, the divine messenger and rainbow goddess. All the bees had to do was gather up these heavenly drops and ‘ripen’ them in wax combs as honey. That’s why Roman naturalists called honey ‘the saliva of the stars.’” – Peter Bernhardt

Honeybees and their Roles in the Colony

Bees are raised from eggs and then larvae in the hive, and they are raised differently depending on the role that they’ll play in the colony. A typical colony will contain one queen, a few hundred male drones, and many thousands of female workers.

The Queen Bee:

A larva destined to become a queen is fed a rich, nutritious mix of pollen, honey, and enzymes called royal jelly for 16 days, the total amount of time it takes for her to mature. The royal jelly ensures that she develops faster than the worker bees and fully develops her reproductive organs and hormone and pheromone-producing glands. The queen is also larger than the workers and drones, with long, tapered abdomens.

Once mature, the queen begins her mating flights. To prevent inbreeding she never mates with a drone from her own colony, but instead flies to a drone congregational area, luring in drones with her pheromones. At 30 - 300 feet in the air, the queen will mate with as few as five to as many as twenty drones, collecting and storing their sperm to fertilize future eggs. The more sperm the more genetic diversity, and the drones die after they mate.

The queen keeps the hive in order with her pheromones, which are picked up by the workers. At least 17 compounds go into this mix, called the "queen substance".

Worker Bees:

Worker bees are entirely female, fed the same rich diet as the queen for the first three days. Then her rations are cut back, resulting in her smaller size, some under-developed reproductive and glandular organs, and the inability to mate and produce queen substance. A worker spends about 21 days developing, the second shortest after the queen, and the smallest bee in the hive.

Worker bees raise the young, build the house, care for the queen, guard the inhabitants, remove the dead, provide heat and air-conditioning when needed, gather food and reserves, and provide a surplus of honey for the beekeeper. Their tasks change as they age, and they may switch between tasks as needed.

A young worker begins as a house bee, and as she grooms, feeds, and cares for the larvae and the queen, she picks up queen pheromone and distributes it around the hive. She also receives nectar and pollen from incoming bees and stores them in the hive.

After a few weeks, a worker’s flight muscles are fully developed and she graduates from being a house bee, able to leave the hive and begin orientation flights. She is also now able to use her sting, and therefore becomes a guard bee. Guards patrol the colony entrances and inspect incoming bees by their odor. All bees in the same colony will have the same recognizable odor, whereas bees from a different colony will have a foreign odor. Guards also challenge intruding yellow jackets, skunks, raccoons, mice, and opossums, biting and stinging to drive them off. There are around 100 active guard bees at a time.

As a worker further matures and begins flying outside the colony routinely, she becomes a forager bee. She forages individually for nectar, pollen, water, and propolis. Foragers have dangerous jobs. Lone bees are susceptible to birds, spiders, preying mantises, sudden rain showers, rapid temperature changes, high winds, traffic, flyswatters, and pesticides.

A scout bee is a forager that searches for the most reliable and abundant sources of nectar using color, shape, markings, and aroma of flowers. Upon finding a rewarding patch, she returns to the colony and recruits other foragers by initiating the “waggle dance”, which conveys the location and distance of the food source in relation to the hive and the sun, and the energy she expended to fly there.

The majority of the hive’s numbers are made up of worker bees in different stages of their lives.

Drone Bees:

Drones are males produced from an unfertilized egg laid by the queen, meaning that 100% of their genes come from that queen. They spend about 24 days developing, the longest of all the bees, resulting in their very large size, huge eyes, and stout, blunt abdomens. Drones cannot clean house, guard the entrance, or forage. They are born singularly to ensure that the genes of the queen are carried on in the general population of honeybees. At mid-season, as many as 1,000 drones may be present in the hive.

After orientation flights around the colony and hive, drones begin mating flights, the purpose for their existence. They fly to drone congregational areas – undisturbed, open spaces in fields or woody areas – and look for other queens to mate with. Their reproductive organs are ripped out of their bodies after they mate with a queen, and they die. At the end of the season the queen stops laying drone eggs and any adult drones left are forcibly expelled from the hive, being too expensive to keep.

The Nasonov Pheromone

The Nasonov gland belongs to worker bees only, and it produces Nasonov pheromone. This pheromone plays many roles in a hive. It keeps a swarm of bees together when they are finding a new home, it directs fellow bees to a good water source, and it guides lost bees back to the hive.

Young bees that haven’t yet become orientated with their surroundings will often become lost on flights. To guide these confused bees home, an experienced worker will stand on the landing board facing the hive and raise her abdomen in a way that separates her two abdominal segments, exposing the Nasonov gland. The gland wafts out the pheromone, and the worker further distributes the sweet-smelling chemical by beating her wings rapidly. As soon as one bee begins this process, others will join in, so that sometimes a large cluster of bees will be standing on the landing board wafting Nasonov pheromone for their lost comrades.

After reading about the Nasonov pheromone, I walked over to the hive to check out the bees’ activity. Lo and behold, a group of workers was there on the landing board with their abdomens raised and their wings beating, their small bodies vibrating and humming with the effort of guiding their lost ones home. What a treat to see this behavior just after reading about it!