Ithaca, NY
@southhillapiaries
Meet the Bees
At South Hill Apiaries, we keep western honey bees (Apis mellifera).
Within each hive, there are worker, queen, and drone bees.
Female
Worker Bee
Worker honey bees make up the vast majority of the hive's population. They are all daughters of the queen, making all the workers in a hive sisters! These infertile females are smaller than the queen and are equipped with pollen baskets on their hind legs used to collect pollen. Workers keep the hive running. They clean the hive, care for the queen and larvae, make bee bread, build comb, turn nectar into honey, guard the entrances, and forage for nectar, pollen, water, and tree sap. These are some very busy bees!
Female
Queen Bee
The queen bee is larger than the workers, with longer legs and a longer abdomen. She is the one responsible for laying eggs. A common misconception is that she is the leader of the hive, but she in reality she gives no orders. Her presence and pheromones alone give the workers a reason to do all the jobs that need doing. Without her there, there would be no brood to care for and no reason to keep expanding the colony. When a new queen hatches, she leaves the hive for her “mating flights." During these flights, she will mate with several males, and store their sperm in a special pouch. She will use it to fertilize the thousands of eggs she will lay in her 1-2 year life (and sometimes longer).
Male
Drone Bee
Drones, or male honey bees, are a little chunkier than workers with large eyes that wrap around their heads. They need these large eyes to spot new queens flying around, as their sole purpose is to mate with them. Once they do so, their genitals explode and they die. This seems like a harsh end to their 3-5 week-long lives, but that's the best-case scenario for them. Many drones don’t mate, and as fall settles in, and the colony isn’t collecting very much nectar, the drones are kicked out of the hive and left for dead.
Hive Products
Bees make and collect a lot more than honey!
Pollen
Honey bees are covered with tiny hairs, that cause pollen to stick to their body when they visit flowers. The bees use their legs to scrape it into small structures on their hind legs (called pollen baskets). This is why you might see little yellow balls on their legs as they’re flying back into the hive.
Wax / Honeycomb
Honey bees use the calories they get from eating honey and nectar to produce wax. Worker bees have wax glands between segments in their abdomen that secrete liquid wax that hardens into small flakes. They then gather the flakes and use their mandibles to manipulate the wax and build honeycomb.
Royal Jelly
Royal jelly is secreted via honeybees hypopharyngeal, or brood food, gland. It is produced by nurse bees with the purpose of feeding young larvae and the queen. Most of the time, royal jelly is fed directly to the larvae or queen as it is secreted, it is not stored. The only time royal jelly is stored is when the queen larvae cannot consume the food as fast as it is provided, leaving royal jelly to accumulate in the queen cells. Royal jelly is fed to all developing larvae, not just future queens. But, queens are fed exclusively royal jelly, while developing worker bees are also fed pollen and honey.
Bee Bread
Bees expend a lot of energy taking care of the hive. They refuel by consuming pollen and nectar; but, fresh pollen would quickly spoil if left in wax cells, and it’s difficult to digest. That’s why bees make bee bread! Bee bread is a mixture of pollen and nectar or honey. The bees also add extra secretions and microorganisms to bee bread. Bacterial additions help break down some of the pollen and release nutrients and amino acids from the pollen.
Propolis
Propolis begins as the antimicrobial resin produced by trees that protects their buds from insects and infection. Bees collect the resin by scraping the surface of the plants with their mandibles (mouth parts). Back in the hive, propolis is used to seal any space that is smaller than a bee, to protect bees from predators, disease, and the elements. Propolis consists of more than 300 chemical components including resins, waxes, essential and aromatic oils, terpenes, flavonoids, and phenols.
Honey
Honey begins as nectar in flowers. Nectar is collected by worker bees who add enzymes to start the magical conversion process. The nectar is brought back to the hive where it is stored in the wax honeycomb. Bee’s fan their wings to evaporate water and concentrate the sugars, eventually producing sweet liquid honey. Honey's color and flavor vary based on the nectar collected by the bees.
