Basic Bee Biology

 Time and Temperature 

Time and temperature have a great deal to do with honeybee biology. You can deduce a great deal of information about the status of your colony by knowing how long it takes for things to occur inside the beehive and what temperatures are required to enable the bees to accomplish certain tasks. You can then make sound decisions based on that information. 

For instance—if you know how long it takes for baby bees to be born—and you know the date that your bees were hived, then you can predict approximately when you will begin to see an increase in the population of your hive. If you see eggs, then you can pinpoint that moment even more exactly because then you will have a more precise knowledge of when the queen began to lay eggs. Queens don’t always start laying on day one—it can easily take a week, sometimes more, for a queen to be released from her queen cage and lay her first eggs. 

If you install a package of bees and you notice drone bees during an inspection two weeks later, you will know that those drones were included in the package that you hived. Why do you know this? Because you know that it takes roughly 24 days for a drone to be born, so obviously those drones didn’t hatch from your hive. 

If you know that the egg stage of a bee’s life cycle is three to four days, then when you see tiny, just- hatched larvae, you can do the math backwards and know roughly how long ago you had a laying queen. Knowing whether you have a healthy laying queen is very important, and yet you don’t always see her in person when inspecting your hive. But you do see the signs of her activities and you can learn a lot from those if you understand the effects of time and temperature on the workings of the colony. This knowledge will keep you from digging through your hive over and over again determined to lay eyes on the queen when really there is no actual need to see her—if you can read the math of the hive. But before we get any deeper into the math, first let’s talk about the inhabitants of the hive...

Who’s Buzzing in this Beehive?

 Few societies, insect or otherwise, point out gender stereotypes so well as honeybee society. Since the female worker bees make up the vast majority of the population of the hive and do virtually all the work of the colony—cleaning, defending, foraging, feeding, caring for young — and the drones do none of these tasks, but spend their days idling away the afternoon in a drone congregation area (DCA) waiting for queens to come by to mate, well—you can see where that’s going, can’t you? Add to that the fact that the drone bee dies after “getting lucky” and mating with the queen, and you can see how beekeeping is a hobby just rife with bad puns and terrible gender jokes—always a source of great amusement! 

But just who are the occupants of a thriving honeybee colony? The average honeybee colony is said to contain approximately 65,000 honeybees. This population consists of one queen, roughly 55,000 worker bees and, during the height of the summer season, approximately 10,000 drones (about 15% of the population of the hive).

Queen Bee 

The queen is the only bee in a thriving, healthy hive that lays eggs. You can learn to recognize her by looking for several different features.

 •Her thorax is very smooth, shiny and black.

 •Her abdomen is considerably longer and more pointed than a worker bee’s.

•Her abdomen is usually more of a solid color than striped like a worker bee’s. 

•A queen’s wings are shorter—they will not reach the length of her abdomen.

She is frequently seen in one of two modes: standing fairly still on the comb and surrounded by a circle of worker bee attendants or, as is more likely while the beekeeper is inspecting the hive, you will just catch a glimpse of her moving rapidly across the comb, determinedly headed away from wherever you are looking.

Drone Bee 

It’s fairly easy for a new beekeeper to mistake a drone for the queen, as drones are also impressively large when compared to workers, but there are some differences that are easy to spot: 

•A drone’s abdomen is blunt and rounded, instead of slender and pointed.

•A drone’s thorax is quite large as well, a drone having very well-developed wing muscles in the thorax. The capacity for swift flight is important to the drone’s successful mating with the queen. 

•Another identifying feature of a drone is the eyes. The eyes of a drone are so large that they cover almost the entire front of the head—so large that they actually touch in the center.

In the fall, the drones are not even suffered to come inside the hive for the winter, but are literally evicted by worker honeybees. Worker bees can be seen carrying drones out of the hive, dropping them on the ground and then prohibiting their return. Unlike the other bees in the hive, drones are considered mostly harmless, since they have no stingers. This inability to sting contributes to the concept of drones’ limited usefulness — as they cannot sting to defend the hive. But it also means that you can pick them up and hand them to your children safely— certain to garner lots of admiration from fascinated youngsters!

Worker Bee 

Worker bees are usually the standard for comparison of the words “larger,” “rounded” or “pointed.” A worker bee can be recognized by these features:

 •First, there are lots of them—85% of the hive will be worker bees.

 •The thorax of a worker bee is a dull black, even slightly fuzzy. The younger the bee, the fuzzier it is— fuzzy yellow bees are only days old.

 •Her abdomen and her wings will be approximately the same length.

 •Her abdomen, in the case of most European honeybees, will be striped. Some are darker than others to the extent of being nearly solid, and some lighter to the same extreme, but as a rule, worker bees have stripes. And these stripes are not really colored stripes on the exoskeleton of a bee — but more of a revealing of the color of the bees’ body from beneath a fine layer of hair, which as the bee ages, and the hairs wear away, creates a more defined stripe.

 •A worker bee’s eyes are small, round and separate from each other.

One of the problems with descriptions of this sort is that they are all comparisons. Beekeepers will tell you all day long that the queen is longer than the drone, and that a drone is bigger than a worker—but when talking about it in a classroom, it can be difficult to make anything of that information. Until you’ve opened a hive, held bars of bees in your hands and seen drones and workers side by side—or been able to compare the long, tapered abdomen of a queen to the shorter, striped abdomen of a worker or the blunt, rounded abdomen of a drone—this information doesn’t really hit home.

Bee Math for Different Inhabitants of the Hive 

•A queen bee spends 3.5 days in the egg stage. 

•A queen spends 4.5 days as a larva, bringing the total to 8. 

•This is followed by 8 days as a pupa in her sealed cell.

•A queen hatches on the 16th day.

•A worker bee begins life as an egg, and in 3.5 days she hatches. 

•She then spends 5.5 days on the larval stage, taking us to day 9. 

•Then she is capped — sealed in her cell—and spends 11 days in the pupa stage. 

•She hatches on the 20th day.

•A drone bee begins its life as an egg, and he also hatches in 3.5 days. 

•A drone exists in the larval stage for 6.5 days, taking us to day 10. 

•A drone then spends 14 days in the capped pupa stage. 

•He hatches on the 24th day.

The time spent in each stage for each caste (type of bee) can vary by as much as a full day—in warmer temperatures things happen more quickly—a prime example of the important connection between time and temperature in beekeeping.

More about Queens

 Oftentimes when you purchase the queen from a bee supplier, she is marked. That means that there is a tiny dot of paint, or a round, colored and possibly numbered disc applied to her thorax. If she has been marked in accordance with the International Queen Marking Code, the color of this paint dot indicates the year she was born.

While this is helpful in keeping track of just how old your queen is, once you have a bit of experience with spotting queen bees you’ll find that you won’t need to put potentially toxic paint on your very important queen in order to be able to find her. I suggest that you simply develop the ability to spot a queen bee and eliminate the need to mark her. 

Another technique used on queen bees is clipping. Clipping a queen is an attempt to thwart the swarming impulse of the hive. Tiny scissors are used to cut her wings so that she is unable to fly; then she can’t leave the hive even when the colony is prepared to reproduce. However, the swarming impulse is how the colony, as a superorganism, reproduces—and the impulse is incredibly strong. So it is rare that efforts to stop swarming ever truly succeed. In a case where the original queen cannot fly because she was clipped, the colony makes its preparations to swarm in spite of this, and then swarms anyway, flying with one of the virgin queens that are raised as part of swarm preparation, and leaving behind the original mated queen. 

There’s an amusing story that relates to why it is so commonly believed that there is only ever one queen bee in a hive. The story goes like this: Have you ever wondered why, when you’re searching for your car keys, they are always in the last place you look? Think about that for just a second... The answer? It’s because when you find them, you stop looking!

The same thing frequently occurs during a hive inspection. The beekeeper does the inspection, looking and looking for the queen bee. Eventually she is found, and then what? The beekeeper stops looking for queens. So it’s probable that 15 to 20% of hives have two queens, at least for a short time during the season. Contrary to the belief that all queens fight to kill other queens, it is possible for two queens, especially a mother and a daughter, to coexist side-by-side, both of them laying eggs and building up the colony. The sexually active part of a queen bee’s life is short. She mates only when she is very young— usually in the first two weeks of her life. She may take several mating flights, but after those flights have occurred and she begins to lay eggs, she never mates again. So it’s very important that the mating process

go off without a hitch during that early, prime mating period in the queen’s life. Bees mate only in flight, not inside the hive. A queen bee receives and stores enough sperm in these early mating flights to fertilize all the eggs she will ever lay. She mates with many drones, and in fact the more promiscuous she is—in other words, the more drones she mates with—the stronger her pheromone is and the more loved she is by the hive. Ten to 20 drones is fairly common; the record I have heard is 40 matings!

Long Live the Queen 

Queens are essential for the survival of the hive. It’s not that she is in charge—or directs any of the activity of the hive—the bees do that, guided by their amazing hive mind process. But because she is the only bee able to lay fertilized eggs that hatch into female bees, the ongoing success and survival of the hive depends entirely upon the health and fecundity of the queen. Queens are said to lay upwards of 1,500 eggs per day at the height of the brood laying season—this incredible rate of growth is crucial to creating the population build up that the hive needs so that they are able to gather enough forage in the summer to be prepared for the winter. 

The presence of the queen’s pheromone in the hive is what provides the colony with a sense that all is well—beekeepers call that being queenright. This pheromone is constantly being spread by the worker bees throughout the hive, and in the event that some accident or injury befalls the queen, the bees become aware of their queenless state very quickly. The level of queen pheromone in the hive dissipates quickly, literally within a few hours. 

There are several scenarios where a new queen bee needs to be created. Some of these events happen intentionally (in the normal course of business), some of them are emergency replacement situations. One of the most frequent causes of queen loss is the beekeeper. It is easy to accidentally roll a queen bee between combs, thus injuring her—crushing her beneath a top bar, or between bars — or worse yet, to have her fall off a comb while inspecting, land on the ground and then get stepped on. For this reason, I always recommend that you inspect cautiously and carefully, and always hold the combs over the hive while inspecting—a simple precaution that can help to prevent this last tragedy.

Swarming 

When a colony is prepared to reproduce, they create swarm queen cells — usually several of them. From these cells will hatch new virgin queens, who will promptly strive to eliminate their competition, other virgin queens, by stinging them to death, often while they are still in their cells. The successful queen will fly to mate, return to the hive and then begin her life as the queen for the bees in the remainder hive—the bees that remained behind after a swarm, in the original hive. Swarming is a reproduction event — this is how bees make more bees. This queen replacement process is completely intentional — and the existing queen in the colony participates in it by laying an egg in the vertical cell that was prepared especially for this purpose. To read more about swarms, see Chapters 5 and 6.

Supersedure 

A medieval-sounding term that means to supplant, or take the place of the previous authority—this term conjures up visions of plots to overthrow the monarchy—a description that really isn’t that far off. Should the bees become dissatisfied with their queen—whether she has become so old that she no longer lays

enough eggs to keep the colony viable, or her pheromone levels are not strong enough to maintain a sense of cohesion in the hive, the sense of being queenright—they move to replace her. The bees choose a freshly hatched larva and use that larva to make a replacement queen. They reshape the wax of its brood cell, turning it so that the cell is oriented vertically. This is the reason that supersedure cells are found on the face of the comb—since that is where young larvae will be found. That larva is then fed a steady diet of royal jelly, and she morphs into a queen bee. Supersedure is a queen replacement event—but not a colony reproduction event. It is intentional on the part of the bees—but the queen does not participate, and in fact the bees will do away with her when they are certain of the success of her replacement. They may run her out of the hive, or ball her—a phenomenon where a large ball of bees cluster around her and create so much heat that they kill her.

Emergency Queen Replacement 

Should the level of queen pheromone in the hive drop too low—due to injury, the purposeful removal of the queen or beekeeper error—the bees quickly become aware of this and begin an emergency queen replacement immediately.

 It is possible for a hive that has suddenly lost its queen to replace her on their own—provided they have brood available in the hive at the appropriate phase of the larval stage. Again, a freshly hatched larva is best—and the bees use that larva, reshaping the wax cell and turning it so that the cell is oriented vertically, just like they do when superseding a queen. They feed that soon-to-be replacement queen the same royal jelly diet that a swarm or supersedure queen would be fed, and in 12 more days, they will have a new queen. This is a life-or-death event for the hive. Without a queen, the hive cannot survive. If they are unable to replace their queen, the queen pheromone level in the hive will drop to where it no longer performs one of its major functions—the suppression of the ovaries of worker bees. Should this occur, the hive experiences a condition known as having a laying worker.

Laying Worker 

In a thriving, healthy hive, a worker bee lays no eggs. Worker bees are considered female in that they have ovaries and they are able to lay eggs, but because they did not begin life as a queen, they have never mated and so they are only ever able to lay drone (male) eggs and never worker eggs. 

Without worker bees, none of the work inside the hive will happen—no cleaning, no nursing, no feeding of babies, no foraging, no gathering of pollen or nectar, water or propolis resins. The number of drones soon begins to exceed the number of worker bees, and the whole hive is now in a downward spiral—a situation we sometimes call a colony of lost boys. 

It is difficult for a hive to recover from having a laying worker. Beekeeper intervention is required. If the beekeeper has the resources available, he or she can provide the laying worker colony with bars of open brood comb. A bar of open brood provided once a week for two to three weeks can set this back to rights. The pheromones emitted by the open brood will begin to reset the balance in the hive, suppressing the egg production by the laying worker females. By the third week the pheromone balance will have returned to the point where the bees will become newly aware that they have no queen, and they will begin work to replace her, using the fresh larva provided in the comb the beekeeper has inserted in the hive.

A Hive Can Save a Hive—An Argument in Favor of Interchangeable Parts 

Should you find yourself with a queenless hive that has no very young brood in it—please understand this —that hive is helpless to produce a new queen via any of the natural methods described above. But you can help that hive to save itself—by providing a bar of comb containing open brood from another healthy, thriving hive. This amazing ability of bees to create a new queen bee from a worker bee larva is the best reason I can think of for having interchangeable equipment —where the bars from one hive can be moved into any of your other hives—to resolve a life-or-death situation for your bees.

Temperature 

Temperature affects the activities of a honeybee colony, both inside and outside the hive. Some important inside-the-hive temperatures to know: 

•The colony must be able to keep the brood at 93°F in order for it to hatch. Whether that means keeping it warm or keeping it cool depends on the time of year. 

•The temperature of the cluster in a hive during winter, when no brood is being raised, is about 55°F. 

•A colony must be able to heat the area where they are preparing to build wax to 91°F. This helps you decide how big a space to install bees in — based on the outside temperature. 

•Typically bees don’t fly below 48°F, though some breeds such as Russian bees, are said to fly in colder temperatures. 

•You can hive warm bees in cold weather. However, you should not hive cold bees in cold weather. If a single bee’s body temperature drops below 46°F the bee becomes sluggish or even paralyzed. This can create a serious problem when installing a new colony of bees into a top bar hive: If the bees are cold, the weather is cold and the top bar hive has no existing comb, the bees will be unable to reform into a cluster and the colony will die in a cold heap on the bottom of the hive. So if you must hive your bees on a cold day you need to start with warm (room temperature) bees.

Location and Climate 

Two important factors outside the hive are also closely related: the geographical location of the hive and, by extension, the area’s climate. Climate and weather vary significantly from region to region, even down to microclimates within regions. It is important when comparing beekeeping management practices to be cognizant of this. A beekeeper in the southeastern US faces a completely different set of circumstances than does a beekeeper in New England, or in the rainy Northwest. Significant differences are also found within regions, such as between coastal and inland or mountainous locations. 

The climate of an area determines the growing season. What is in bloom, and when, determines where and when the bees forage. The symbiotic relationship between plants that need pollinating in order to set fruit and bees that need food in order to survive is a magical dance, integral to our entire food supply. It’s one of the things you find yourself noticing more and more as a beekeeper—how everything is connected: plants, weather, bloom time, location, temperature, precipitation. It’s as if, when you become a beekeeper, you also become one part meteorologist, one part botanist and one part entomologist. For instance, here in Maine our growing season usually begins about mid-April. That’s when we typically see the first dandelion; that’s when the maples begin to bloom and the pussy willows begin to

sprout their fuzzy catkins. In warmer climates, these events happen considerably earlier in the year—in some climates the growing season is virtually year-round. Bees in cold climates have a super short growing season in which to flourish, and yet there are even honeybees being raised in Alaska. Different pests thrive in different climates and so different hive management techniques are inherent to some locations that are unheard of or little-used in others. This is why beekeepers have to be careful not to overgeneralize things such as beekeeping calendars — as they are extremely specific to the locale.

The Pollination Behavior of Honeybees 

Pollination is the fancy name for the event that occurs when grains of pollen from the flowers of one plant are moved to the reproductive organs of another plant of the same species. You could describe it as the plants having sex. Pollination almost seems accidental, after all it’s just bees bumping up against flower parts, and yet it’s crucial to the way the plant world works. Honeybees are excellent pollinators because when they exit the hive, they concentrate solely on one type of plant on that foraging excursion. In other words, a honeybee that leaves the hive and visits a dandelion will next visit a dandelion, and then another and another. A honeybee that goes out to forage and visits an apple tree will then proceed to visit nothing but apple trees on that foraging trip away from the hive. A honeybee does not travel from dandelion to apple—and you don’t see dande-apples!

The Stinging of Bees 

As a rule, honeybees are not aggressive. It is only the female worker honeybee that is even able to sting. Drones, the male bees, have no stingers. And a queen bee, while she does have a stinger, only uses her stinger to eliminate another queen. Stinging is an expensive defense mechanism for the bees. A honeybee can sting only one time in her life, because when she stings, she dies. Stinging is a kamikaze mission on her part—so she does not sting frivolously.

The reason that a honeybee can only sting once in her lifetime is this: A honeybee has a barbed

stinger. And when that stinger penetrates your skin, your bee jacket or anything else, the barb causes the stinger to lodge there. When the bee is then brushed off or tries to fly away, her venom sac is pulled out of her abdomen along with the stinger, effectively disemboweling and certainly killing the bee. So stinging is not something that a honeybee does for fun. 

Knowing this makes it a little easier to understand bee behavior. If you give them good reason, honeybees will sting, but as a rule, it is more in their self-interest not to sting. So, why does a honeybee sting? The primary reason for a bee to sting is in the course of protecting the colony’s two most precious resources—their brood and their food supply. The incidence of stinging, and bees’ irritability, may increase in stressful situations such as during a nectar dearth. Hives that have been under attack by skunks or bears are also likely to be defensive. 

And some bees are just more irritable and less docile than others. On the highly irritable end of the scale you will find Africanized honeybees, and on the docile end, the Italian honeybee. If you put your hand down on a worker bee, step on her or crush her between a top bar and your fingers, she will also do her best to sting you then—even as she dies.

Dark Colors 

I don’t claim to know the real reason why bees seem more likely to sting dark colors. I don’t know that I hold with the anecdote you often hear that they think you are bear, and anyway it doesn’t hold true in every single case. But if you’d like to increase the odds of not getting stung, it seems to make sense to wear light colors.

Strong Scents

 It also makes sense not to wear heavily scented body care products or cologne—as that has been known to cause an aggravated reaction. So has the smell of bananas on your fingers, as the bees’ alarm pheromone smells very much like bananas.

Not All Bugs that Fly and Sting are Honeybees—or Even Bees 

Yellow jackets, wasps and hornets are not honeybees. Yes they all fly, and yes they all can sting—but yellow jackets and hornets and wasps seem to look at life with a completely different attitude than honeybees. Wasps, hornets and the like can be aggressive seemingly just for the heck of it—and there’s a crucial biological, physical difference between the two... Yellow jackets, wasps and hornets have smooth stingers so they are able to sting repeatedly without dying from it. 

As a thinking beekeeper, you are likely to find yourself providing a public service by educating people about honeybees, their biology and their “sting policy.” Every little bit helps — and the more people that understand that bees are beneficial insects, the more support we can garner for their protection.

Are You Really Allergic? 

Reacting to a bee sting does not mean you are allergic. A bee sting contains bee venom. Venom is designed to cause a reaction in the victim. If you are stung by a honeybee, you should expect your body to have a reaction — a local reaction—to the venom contained in the sting.

Local Likely 

local responses include pain from the event of the sting itself, redness, swelling and itching. The swelling and itching may be fairly intense, and they may last several days. These are normal responses to a bee sting. A warning regarding swelling is appropriate here: If you are stung on the hand or arm and you are wearing a ring—remove it immediately! If your fingers begin to swell while you are wearing a ring, that can be uncomfortable at the very least and quite dangerous at the worst. The amount of redness, swelling and itching varies according to the individual who has been stung, as well as the location of the sting and the amount of venom the bee was able to pump from her venom sac into the victim before the venom sac was removed or before the muscles pushing the venom into the sting site ceased to contract.

Systemic 

Sometimes people worry that because they swell after a bee sting they are having a life-threatening, allergic reaction to the sting. This is unlikely. A true allergic reaction involves anaphylaxis—a severe, whole-body response to a substance that has become an allergen. This is a life-threatening situation and should be taken very seriously—but it is very different from a local reaction. The symptoms of an anaphylactic reaction happen quickly—within minutes or even within seconds. They can include difficulty in breathing, difficulty in swallowing, anxiety, confusion, dizziness and light- headedness, hives, extreme itchiness, redness, slurring of speech, wheezing, as well as abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting or diarrhea, among other things. The proper response when someone has a severe allergic reaction to a bee sting is to get immediate emergency medical help. If the person has a known allergy to bee stings and has medication or an EpiPen, help her or him to take or use it.

Unpredictable 

How a person responds to a bee sting can be unpredictable. Many beekeepers, over time, develop immunity or a resistance to the effects of bee venom. Some will tell you that the first sting of the season is different from a sting received later in summer or in the fall. Some beekeepers accumulate hundreds of stings in a season, some get stung once or twice, if at all. It’s different for everyone. A person’s reaction can also change over time. There are anecdotes of people who kept bees for years without any mishap at all, then suddenly developed a more serious, even anaphylactic reaction to a bee sting. It is because of that potential for change that I include this warning: When you plan to work your bees, even if you work the hives alone, it makes good sense to let someone know that you are going out to get into the bees. Chances are very good that no ill will befall you—but on the off chance that something does, it would be brilliant if someone knew where to look for you!

Dried Bee Venom 

Another potential way for someone to develop a reaction to bee venom has nothing to do with actually being stung by a bee. If a person is exposed to bee venom, but not enough of it to develop immunity to it, there is a chance of developing a very serious reaction. This can occur if a person is exposed to flakes of dried bee venom, which can remain on a beekeeper’s bee suit and then get into the air in the person’s environment. This doesn’t happen often—but it’s worth noting. The best way to avoid this reaction is to wash your bee gear fairly regularly. Another option is to get everyone in your household interested in bees and get them all stung regularly enough that they develop some immunity!