Episode 2: 'Why bees? An introduction to the European honeybee.' of the podcast is ready for you!
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This week, I talk about the meandering path I took to beekeeping. There's info about how I started with container gardening during our time in Rhode Island; my failure to prevent all my plants from dying of mildew in the humidity of Georgia; as well as some info about what it felt like to move from England to the US, and then from a Northern State to a Southern one.
I also go into a little bit of reptile info! My husband and I currently have over 30 reptiles at our home, and he keeps a few at his work as well. It's our intention to create large, enriching enclosures for our pets, some of which my husband has built himself! This is incredible to me as I struggle to build anything (the chicken run was SO CHALLENGING for me).
I also mention my pink tongue skinks, which I have successfully bred for 2 years in a row. These beautiful lizards are native to Australia (doesn't Aus just have the best of all the animals??) and make wonderful pets. I've fallen madly in love with this small-medium bodied skink, and I'm passionate about producing healthy, happy babies.
And then, I talk all about BEES!! If I could, I'd talk about bees all day, everyday. The European honeybee is a remarkable little insect with a unique colony system.
Many people don’t realise that there are many different types of bees. There are actually over 4000 species of native bees in North America, and they function as essential pollinators for a plethora of plant species. Although the honeybee is an important pollinator, they are not native to the US, and are not the most critical of our pollinators.
So what makes a honeybee so special that people voluntarily keep these stinging insects in their gardens? The obvious answer is their honey production. You might be surprised to learn that other bee species produce honey. However, these species, like the bumblebee, do not live in large colonies, and so only produce the tiny amounts of honey needed to feed themselves and their brood.
The honeybee that we keep is the Western/European honeybee. It is a member of the order HYMENOPTERA, which includes ants, wasps, and saw flies. The honeybee’s Latin name is APIS MELLIFERA.
Apis = bee
Mellifera = honey-bearing
There are 6 other species in the genus APIS but I’ll be exclusively discussing the European honeybee as this is the one kept by beekeepers all over the world.
This remarkable bee was one of the very first domesticated insects. They are our source of delicious honey, an important pollinator, and a key model organism in scientific studies, especially those focused on social evolution, and the toxicity of pesticides.
As you likely already know, honeybees live in large colonies, made up of thousands of worker bees, and a single queen. In the wild, honeybees live trees, logs, and other places with convenient cavities that allow them to build comb in a dark and enclosed space. As beekeepers, we keep our bees in predominantly wooden hives, using frames that encourage the drawing of wax.
There are 2 main types of hive: the Langstroth and the top bar.
Let’s start with the Langstroth hive. This is probably the most common. It was invented by Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth in 1851. He was a reverend in Pennsylvania who discovered ‘bee space’; the ideal amount of space that allows bees to create neatly oriented comb without restricting their movement around the hive. Lorenzo realised that this concept of bee space allowed him to design frames that would prevent bees from attaching comb to the edges of the hive body thus allowing him to remove honeycomb without destroying the entire comb structure, which is traditionally how it was done.
Langstroth hives are made of wood (sometimes plastic) boxes that stack vertically. These boxes (or supers) come in deep and medium sizes, and can contain 8 or 10 frames. They require a baseboard, inner cover, and a heavier top cover.
Top bar hives, in contrast, are horizontal. They use only top bar frames with no foundation so this is a great option for those wanting to harvest a great deal of natural comb. One downside is that these combs, being attached at one one point to the frame, can break free during inspections and comb removal for honey extraction. You also cannot add space to a top bar hive like you can with a Langstroth; you start with a finite space for the bees to fill with comb. I’ve also heard that top bars can be hard to overwinter in cold areas.
I personally have wooden, 10 frame Langstroth that I painted and decorated myself. My frames have yellow foundation as I prefer this to the black, as well as a coating of natural wax to help get the bees started on drawing out comb.
Now that we’ve discussed hive options, let’s talk about the bees that will live inside!
So what makes up a honeybee colony? We have workers (all female), who make up the majority of the colony; drones (males) that function as the sperm/reproductive agents of the colony; and the queen bee, who is the mother of the colony.
As I said, worker bees make up the majority of the hive. They are all females, and are produced from fertilized eggs making them DIPLOID (containing 2 sets of chromosomes from male and female parents). They are unable to lay eggs. In fact, their reproductive development is suppressed by the presence of queen and brood pheromones. Only in the complete absence of this will some worker bees develop the ability to lay eggs, although all of those eggs will become drones for reasons I will explain soon.
Any honeybee you see out foraging is a worker bee. They do all jobs within a hive; starting as nurse bees that care for the brood, eventually going on to become cleaners, guard bees, and foragers.
Worker bees can sting you and will die as a result due to their stinger being barbed. It gets hooked into your skin and, as the bee pulls away, its innards are dragged out of it due to their attachment to the stinger.
Assuming they don’t sting anything, a worker bee will live about 6-7 weeks in the summer, and 4-6 months over winter.
The drone bee is male and makes up a small percentage of the colony. They are exclusively from unfertilized eggs, making them HAPLOID (containing only one set of chromosomes from the queen, their mother). These big, adorable looking bees don’t do anything but go out and mate with virgin queens during the Spring and Summer. They do not have a stinger as this organ makes up their reproductive system. After they successfully mate, they die. If any drones have not mated by the Fall, when food starts to become scarce, their sisters will kick them out of the hive to die in the cold. Drones are easy to spot inside a hive as they’re larger than their sisters, with big eyes, and cute, blunt little tushes. They also make a deeper hum or buzz. Interesting side note: bee semen is pink! I learned this recently while listening to Episode 109 of Pollination, an excellent podcast from the Oregon State University Extension service. Dr Shelley Hoover shared this interesting fact on the episode!
The queen bee is the matriarch of the hive. She is the ONLY reproductive female, and lives about 1-3 years. After she emerges, she will go on a series of mating flights where she will receive and store all the sperm she will ever need for the rest of her life. After successfully mating, with as many 20-30 drones, she will return to the hive and lay eggs until she dies. She will never leave again unless the hive needs to swarm, which is something I will explain later.
The queen is noticeably larger than other bees; about twice the size of a worker bee, with an elongated abdomen. She does have a stinger that she can use many times. If multiple virgin queens emerge from their cells around the same time, the first queen out will use this stinger to kill her royal sisters. A hive can only have one queen except in extremely rare circumstances.
Okay, you are now familiar with the bees that make up a honeybee colony, and you have chosen your style of hive. What else do you need to get started?
In terms of equipment, you will need the following:
-a hive stand to help deter predators like skunks, raccoons, and invading insects like ants
-a smoker
-a hive tool (flat end and curved end; like a tiny crow bar)
-some kind of feeder
-a veil
-a suit or jacket
-gloves (heavy or nitrile, which I recommend)
-frame holder
-frame grip (especially if you have any hand weakness like I do from carpal tunnel)
-bee brush (maybe; can be useful but not required)
-most importantly; a record keeping tool, be it a phone ap, google doc, or good old fashioned journal
Most importantly, how do you get the bees?
There are 3 main ways; purchase a package, purchase a nucleus colony, or capture a swarm.
What is a package? Well, it’s a plastic or wooden box containing 3-4lbs of bees with a caged queen and a food source. These bees are taken from many different hives and the queen is therefore not ‘their’ queen; she is totally foreign to them hence why she is caged, and why she will need time to be accepted.
Pros:
-cheaper than a nucleus colony or ‘nuc’
-can be shipped directly to your home
-stores like Tractor Supply even sell them so they’re very accessible
-can usually buy them earlier in the season
Cons:
-the queen needs time to be accepted so you need to learn how and when to safely release her
-they will be very hungry from traveling and need to be fed as soon as you get them and until they have started to build out new comb. This is an energy intensive process and they’ll need all the help they can get. Remember, the queen cannot lay until they have created comb for her to place the eggs.
-you have no way of knowing the genetics of the hive, which affects things such as how they build comb and their disposition (are they calm or aggressive?)
-from the Southern states predominantly so you have no way of knowing how they will fare over a cold winter if you live further North
-might need early mite treatment (often recommended)
A nucleus colony (or nuc) is a small hive body containing 2-5 frames. In a 5 frame nuc, you can expect 3 frames of eggs and brood, and 2 of pollen/honey, with a mated and actively laying queen.
Pros:
-built up frames so less taxing comb creation
-accepted queen
-all life stages of bees from eggs to foragers
-’ready made’ hive; just install and go!
-great start for your colony
-usually better able to track genetics
-local bees so used to climate
Cons:
-more expensive
-cannot be shipped so you must drive to pick up
-if using Langstroth hive, no issue with install, but gets very tricky if you try to install to a top bar or Warre hive due to the construction of the frames
Lastly, you have swarm captures. This is where you use a swarm trap to catch feral honeybee colonies. You need some kind of box with some frames and a lure; you can buy chemical lures that are supposed to mimic bee pheromones or some pieces of old comb. A deep Langstroth box is a good size for luring a swarm.
Pros:
-free bees! (minus equipment needed to catch them)
-might be from an overwintered hive, making them good survivors
Cons:
-unknown age of queen. It is always an established queen that leaves with a swarm so she could be a few years old, and older queens tend not to be as good layers
-unknown genetics
-no guarantees; could have high mite levels, could be mean, have poor build up, be diseased, etc. Keep in mind, swarming is a natural form of reproduction for a colony but it can also be triggered by high mite levels.
-you might never catch one and miss your chance to start beekeeping that year
So what did I do to get started?
-took classes from local teachers and keepers for a year
-amassed a large collection of bee books
-read everything I could
-followed blogs, joined online communities, met with local keepers, etc
-Spring of this year (2019), bought 2 5 frame nucleus colonies from a local keeper and one of my teachers
This has been a great start to my hives and my teacher is available to help with any questions I have over time, which has been a truly invaluable resource.
Picking up my nucs did not go quite as I planned. I’m going to tell this story so you know how important it is not to be scared off by early mistakes!
I went to get my nucs and they were so full of brood and food stores that my teacher thought it best to check them for signs of swarming (which is often triggered by lack of space). She went frame by frame, decided all looked good, and sealed each box up before loading them into the back of my car. We then went to her house for a while (can’t remember why) and, when we came back, I found one of the nucs ‘leaking’ bees in my car!! So we pulled it out and my teacher went to reseal it. I was relaxed at this point and excited to get my bees so I got complacent and approached my teacher without a veil. After being messed with earlier and then bumped around as we moved them, the guard bees of this nuc were NOT HAPPY and came at me. I’d never dealt with aggressive bees before and started flailing around and squeaking like a freakin’ idiot. I was nailed on the forehead by one particularly determined lady; she came at me with stinger out and ready!
Well, after this embarrassment, I was too scared to get in the car without my veil on so drove about 5 mins before telling myself to suck it up and continuing on my way. At this point, I’m hot, filled with adrenaline, and utterly humiliated to have embarrassed myself infront of my teacher (who never even flinches at bees under her veil, which is my worst nightmare). So I get home and promptly burst into floods of tears. After cooling off and rehydrating, I grabbed my smoker, suited up, and installed my nucs with zero issues.
And, because I am a softee and secret romantic, I named my 2 queens to help with my record keeping. One I called Bridget, named after the Celtic goddess of Spring and fertility. The queen of the nuc that stung me, I named Macha, after the Celtic goddess of war and a historical avenger of women! It seemed fitting.
As of today, Queen Bridget is no more, and I now have Macha, Cerridwen (goddess of rebirth and the dark moon), and Morrigan (goddess of renewal, war, and fate). How all this came to be(e) will be the topic of my next episode!
A book I used as a primary resource for this episode/blog post is Beecabulary Essentials by Andrew Connor.
Until next time!
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