About honey bees….

There is soooo much to know about these little aliens. Seriously, it’s shocking how intelligent and adaptive they are. Following my blog and my YouTube page will give you updates and insight into their world and my journey with them.

The basics are that there is one queen bee for every hive, unless you get a hive with a mother/daughter queen situation, but that only occurs in about 10% of hives. Each hive has 30,000 to 50,000 bees by mid-summer. The population declines in the fall down to about 15,000 bees and by the middle of winter it can range from 3,000-15,000 depending on a number of factors. Bees don’t hibernate, but they cluster in the hive, kind of like penguins in Antarctica. They have the ability to uncouple the muscles that flap their wings and then use these muscles to vibrate which creates heat. Since bees flap their wings 200 times per second they can generate a lot of heat. In fact, even if it’s -20 outside, the inner cluster will be at a comfortable 92-94 degrees. The queen stops laying eggs late fall and doesn’t start up again until early spring here in Maine. Once trees and grasses start producing pollen the queen will start building the population in the hive. The worker bees paste pollen to their hind legs (called pollen baskets) and bring it back to the hive where it’s given to “house bees” which are juvenile bees that pack it into the comb. Pollen is protein for the bees, nectar and honey are the carbohydrates. Starting around February the queen slowly starts laying eggs, and by April, the hive population is back up to 10,000-15,000 bees. The sole reason bees make honey is to survive the winter. Depending on the population of the hive going into winter, each full hive generally needs about 70-100 pounds of honey to survive the winter. In early spring, before there are trees or flowers producing nectar, we usually need to supplement them by introducing some frames that are filled with honey. These are generally taken from hives that don’t make it through the winter. Approximately 20%-40% of hives die during the winter due to a number of factors. These factors include the severity of winter, how much food they have, disease, population and bee keeper error.