Did You Know?!?!?!
- A bee hive can contain between 20-80 thousand bees...with only one Queen
- A healthy queen lays around 2500 eggs a day. She is busiest in the summer
- Bee's wax takes eight times the amount of energy to make over honey
- Worker bees live approx. 40 days, during this time they will produce around a twelfth of a teaspoon of honey. They literally work themselves to death.
-Queens live for 2-5 years.
- In the winter, the drones get kicked out and the workers live much longer...up to three months
- Bees take up to 30 minutes to use the bathroom after holding it all winter
Three types of bees in a hive
- Every Queen is a normal worker bee when her egg is laid. It isn't until the other workers decide to turn her into a queen and feed her Royal Jelly that she gets her special characteristics.
- This does not happen unless the hive looses their queen or chooses to supersede the existing one.
Life Cycle of a Bee
- A Queen Bee takes 16 days to emerge after being laid
- Worker Bees (ladies) take 24 days
- Drones (males) take 21 days
- Honey bees are great flyers. They fly at a speed of around 15.5 miles per hour and beat their wings 200 times per second!
- Bees visit 50-100 flowers in one collecting flight
- To make one pound of honey, 2 million flowers must be visited (approx. 55,000 flight miles)
Bee Hives
- There are many different types of hives but the Langstroth Hive is by far the most popular and my chosen hive type
- It is comprised of a base, different layers (all containing 10 frames), and a top
- The two most common size boxes used are the "deep" where brood is stored, and a "medium/ super", where the honey is stored.
Separating the honey from the Brood
- A "Queen Excluder" is placed between the brood box and the super during the "Flow". This is when they make their honey
- By not letting the queen upstairs, she can not lay eggs and the area is dedicated for honey only.
- "super" frames that are filled from edge to edge with honey weigh approx. 7-10 lbs.
Pollen Charts
- A "Resource Frame" is usually packed with pollen. My honey is considered, "wildflower" honey as the girls collect pollen from whatever is blooming at the time.
- Sometimes a frame of pollen can be almost rainbow colored.
-Pollen charts like this help me to determine what the girls are collecting and how far they are traveling from their hives.