What is a Honeybee?
Honeybees are eusocial flying insects within the genus Apis of the bee clade.
Honey bees are known for their construction of perennial colonial nests made out of wax and their sweet honey they make and keep for food. Their colonies can reach very large sizes and produce a surplus of honey which they store inside of the wax hives. This makes them a known target for many animals (and humans) who have been trying to steal their honey for literally ages.
Find a large selection and great deals for seeds and garden tools, plan your fall garden now!
Check out my new Farmer’s Market for fresh raw honey and more shipped right to your door!
👇👇👇
There are eight surviving species of honey bees that are recognized. Honey bees represent only a small fraction of the roughly 20,000 known species of bees. Honeybees of the present day are split into three classes, Micrapis (dwarf honey bees), Megapis (giant honey bee), and Apis (western honey bee).
Most apiaries in the US keep the Apis mellifera, a species within the western honeybee class. It is also referred to as the European or common honeybee, this species is the most common domesticated honeybee in the world, with first domestication estimated at 2600 BC. Many different subspecies and breeds have been developed over time, with many different colors, behaviors and anatomy within the western honeybee species.
The western honeybee was not native to North America when European explorers arrived. However, there were other native species that were kept by the Native Americans. Explorers brought over the German honeybee first, with the Italian honeybee arriving later. Pretty cool to think of the early explorers loading up honeybee boxes onto ships for a long voyage!
So what do honeybees do?
First we’ll cover the life cycle. Honeybee colonies as with other eusocial insects consist of one queen which is a female, up to thousands of drone bees which are male, and tens of thousands of worker bees which are female. This is how the life cycle works:
Eggs are laid singly in a cell in a wax comb which is produced and shaped by the worker bees. The queen can choose to fertilize the egg she is laying, usually depending on which cell she is laying it into. Drones develop from unfertilized eggs. Females (queens and worker bees) develop from fertilized eggs. Larvae are initially fed with royal jelly which is produced by worker bees. Larva fed solely on royal jelly, develop into queens. The larva undergoes several different stages before spinning a cocoon within the cell where it will grow and hatch.
Young worker bees, sometimes called "nurse bees", clean the hive and feed the larvae. When their royal jelly-producing glands begin to weaken, they begin building comb cells. They progress to other within-colony tasks as they become older, such as receiving nectar and pollen from foragers, and guarding the hive. Later still, a worker takes her first orientation flights and finally leaves the hive and typically spends the remainder of her life as a forager.
Worker bees cooperate to find food and use a pattern of "dancing" to communicate information regarding resources with each other. Honey bees also perform a tremble dance to communicate to receiver bees when to collect nectar from returning foragers.
During cold periods, honey bees stop flying. When temperature drops below 50 degrees, worker bees form a tight cluster inside the hive around the queen to keep the temperature between 81-93 degrees F. They do this by shivering tightly together to generate heat. Worker bees rotate from the inside of the hive to the outside to stay warm.
The honey that has been stored over the spring and summer is used for energy. Beekeepers are sure to leave the bees plenty of honey to make it through the long winter. They can use up to 100 pounds of honey depending on the size of the colony.
In hot summer months worker bees regulate the temperature in a similar way, by fanning air throughout the hive. They also collect water which evaporates as they fan their wings to cool the hive down.
Defense Mechanism
In order to defend the hive, workers will sting intruders as a form of defense, and alarmed bees release a pheromone that stimulates the attack response in other bees. This pheromone is also released from the stinger barb, which continues to deliver venom and pheromone even after the stinger is detached from the worker bees abdomen. The worker bee dies when the stinger is detached.
The bee venom is known as apitoxin and carries several active components including melittin and phospholipase A2. There has been research into bee venom’s potential properties for reducing rheumatoid arthritis, fighting cancer, and reducing inflammation.
The stingers do not work properly on other insects because the stinger is only effective when it is embedded in fleshy tissue. However, a honeybee’s stinger is able to penetrate the membranes between joints in the exoskeleton of other insects, which is how they go about killing the queen.
They use another method of defense against insect intruders by surrounding it with a mass of defending worker bees, which vibrate their muscles vigorously to raise the temperature of the intruder to a lethal level, this attack method is called "balling". This phenomenon is also used to kill a queen perceived as intruding or defective, an action known to beekeepers as 'balling the queen', named for the ball of bees formed.
Pollination
Bees use pollen and nectar as a food source. Pollen is the honeybee’s sole source of protein which they turn into amino acids that are vital to their nutrition. Nectar provides them with carbohydrates and water. On hot summer days worker bees will collect water from nearby sources.
In the process of collecting nectar and pollen, worker bees pollinate the plants from which they are gathering. There have been claims that without honeybees, we would starve due to un-pollinated fruit and vegetable plants, but this may unfortunately be a psyop.
While honeybees do account for a large percentage of the worlds crop pollination, many crops that make up our food sources today need no insect pollination at all. Many crops native to the US were available long before honeybees were introduced to the area. Not to mention, the numerous other insect pollinators available naturally in the wild.
Honeybee Parasites
There are three major parasites bee keepers must be vigilant in protecting their hives against.
Wax Moth - Adult moths enter the hive at night unnoticed and lay eggs. The larvae hatch and tunnel through the wax comb eating the pollen stored inside leaving silk linings in the tunnels which entangles and starves the young honeybee larvae. Wax moth larva can infect the honeybee hive with dangerous pathogens.
Varroa Mite - small mites infect the hive by infiltrating the young honeybee larva and laying eggs on the young honeybee pupa. The hatching eggs eat and destroy the young honeybees and cause deformities. If infestations get too large, the colony will die out due to low reproduction rates.
Hive Beetle - Disruption to honeybee hives occurs by entering the hive and eating the honey and young brood while destroying the wax comb and possibly bringing deadly diseases and pathogens.
Bee Products
Honey - complex substance made when bees ingest nectar, process it, and store the substance into honey combs. Here’s how it works.
workers collect plant nectar.
nectar is carried to the hive.
house bees add additional enzymes to the nectar.
sugars molecules change form during the process.
water content is reduced by dehydration.
placed in capped wax cells when ripe.
Beeswax - worker bees secrete a light yellow/white colored wax from endocrine glands on their abdomens. Many beauty products contain beeswax, as well as candles and wood coating.
Propolis - Dark brown, resin like mixture collected by honey bees from tree buds, sap flows or other botanical sources. They use it to seal up unwanted openings in the hive. Honeybees glue the boxes of the bee hive together, sometimes glued so well it is almost impossible to open the hive!
Royal Jelly - White colored bee secretion used to nourish the larvae and queen. There are claims that royal jelly can boost testosterone.
We’ve barely even scratched the surface of the Honeybee world! We’ll cover more next time.
WAGMI
Farmer
Great post, thank you! For anyone interested I recommend reading 'Aus dem Leben der Bienen' ('The Dancing Bees: An Account of the Life and Senses of the Honey Bee') by Karl von Frisch. Even though it’s from the 1920s most of his observations stand true today.
Very informative! Thank you Farmer!