The Day I Spied on the Honeybees
As a new-bee beekeeper (pun intended *wink*) and a long time lover of all things bee, I wanted to see how my hive’s activity changed over the course of a typical summer day. So, around almost every half hour starting at 10:30am, I grabbed a video camera and went to spy on my bees.
10:30am
Bees are ectothermic (cold-blooded), which means they need the warmth of the sun to get enough energy to go out flying. My goal was to hopefully catch their first emergence in the morning when the hive was still in the shade. Because the bee yard is located on the south western side of the science centre, the bees don’t get any sun until late morning. However when I got to the hive around 10:30 they bees had already started to emerge from the hive despite it still being in shadow. Checking the temperature outside it was already 20C outside so they must have been warm enough to venture out. It’s actually important honeybee management to know where to place your hive so they get as much daylight as possible, to “bee” as productive as possible.
11:30am
My second spy mission in the bee yard was more active. By this time the hive was in full sun and there were bees coming and going. When honey bees go out to forage they bring back either: water, nectar, or pollen. Water is transferred from the foraging bee to a thirsty bee waiting inside the entrance but it’s rare to see those types of exchanges. This job is usually given to a bee who’s recently upgraded to forager bee. Nectar from a foraging bee is also transferred directly to a hive bee who will then bring it to an empty cell and begin the honey making process (to learn more about how bees make honey click here). Pollen is carried by a foraging bee by packing the pollen tightly around a series of hairs on their back legs called the pollen basket. The returning bee will go to either an empty cell or a cell that already has some pollen it it and using her back legs scrape the pollen from the pollen basket into the cell. She’ll then use her head to pack the pollen down into the cell.
At the entrance to every hive there are guard bees. These are older forager bees who can better serve the colony by protecting their hive and their honey from intruders. Intruders might include a bee from another hive. As Science North’s bee yard has 6 honeybee hives, it is a possibility that one forager might accidentally land on another hive not her own home. Oops! Using her antennae, a guard bee will “smell” the confused bee to figure out whether or not it is her sister. The queen bee releases pheromones that are unique to that queen, so this is the scent the guard bees is looking for. On my spy mission I noticed one bee following another bee around actively touching it with her antennae.
Sometimes other intruders are wasps, who try to steal some honey, and on this particular spy mission a rather large bumblebee flew into the hive and then pretty quickly back out!
12:30pm
Once again the guard bees were hard at work, but this time instead of one smelling the other, two honeybees had ganged up on another and it looked like one was trying to sting the possible intruder. It’s a bug-eat-bug world out there and bees work hard to protect their honey stores!
1:30pm
As it was nearing the hottest part of the day, the honeybees were relentless in their search for water, nectar and pollen. While we humans were seeking respite from the humidity and heat, the honeybees were still hard at work. An interesting note here is that the humidex was rather high on this particular day and while bees like the heat…humidity is not good for making honey. In order for honey to be considered honey, it needs to have a low water content and the bees have to evaporate the water in the nectar until it has less than 19% water before it can be capped and stored as honey. The fact that it was so humid (and even more so the following day) that the honeybees had to work very hard to maintain a dry atmosphere inside their hive.
3:30pm
A honeybee hive community is founded on a queen bee, who lays all of the eggs in the hive. If she lays a fertilized egg, a female worker bee is created. If she lays an unfertilized egg, this becomes a male bee called a drone. The female workers are all of the queen’s daughters and they are responsible for the rearing of the larvae, removing waste from the hive, feeding and cleaning the queen and not to mention foraging and honey making. The drones well….they eventually fly off to go find a queen to mate with. If they are successful they die, if they don’t find a queen they come back to the hive and really do nothing. The worker bees have to clean and feed the drones and they will sometimes tolerate their presence even throughout the fall and keep them around to help insulate the colony during hibernation. But sometimes the girls get a little fed up with the drones and force them out of the hive. During my last spy mission to the hive some workers were trying to do just that. I’m not really sure what triggers their change of heart, but such is life when you have up to 80,000 mouths to feed!
“Bee”-ing (Ok, I’ll stop now 😉 a bee enthusiast and a new beekeeper , it’s fascinating to sit and watch the colony doing their thing, coming and going and seeing them on the flowers in the gardens surrounding Science North. I may go as far as saying that it’s meditative. If you’re having a stressful week, just remember the honeybee and how amazing and hardworking they are, how important they are to our lives, and then come check them out here on the third floor at Science North. The Bluecoats will “bee” happy to answer your questions (Hehe! Ok, last one I promise!).
