BEEKEEPING

My grandson, Alex, had these words to say about when he took care of bees:

When I took care of my bees, I found it a place where I could be relaxed and find relief from my worldly cares. During spring, summer and fall, I could eat the honey comb and honey, which tasted much better than eating store bought honey.

During the winter the bees hibernate at the top of the hive, among the honey, because it is warmer. When they begin to come out of hibernation, they would often find mice at the bottom of the hive. Bees would begin to sting the mice to get rid of them but many bees died trying to save the hive, since bees lose their stinger when they sting, unlike wasps.

The queen is the only “real” female within a honeybee colony and is responsible for maintaining a strong population of worker bees in the hive. Although often referred to as the ‘mother of the colony’, she is not responsible in any way for the care of her bees, and is not able to do so.

Female babies who are to be queen bees are no different from other baby bees who are to be worker bees. The difference comes from a different diet. Queen and worker bees are fed similar royal jelly diets for the first three days, after which the diet of worker bee gradually changes to a mixture of honey and pollen. On the other hand, queen bees receive royal jelly for their entire growing stage and have enough in their cells to continue feeding after cells have been closed.

For 3 to 5 days after coming out, a new queen may make several practice flights, followed by numerous mating flights. The young queen begins egg laying 2 to 4 days after the final mating flight. Except for swarming, the queen never again leaves the hive.

In hives like mine, queen bees are replaced to give continued life to the colony, to help stop disease and to make the worker bees more happy. Bees will naturally replace an older queen bee with a daughter queen usually through swarming.

A lot of generations of self-raised queen bees may result in a going back to bad habits like a meaner colony which is difficult to control, sickness due to bee diseases, and lower honey making.

I wore a bee suit, which slowed down the times the bees could sting me, but they still could get under my head piece and sting if I didn’t get it snug enough. Sometimes they would even try to sting me through my gloves and although they didn’t always get me, they died trying.

Often wasps would try to steal honey but couldn’t get very far, because they were much outnumbered. Some bees from other hives would steal honey and Jeff, who worked with me, would put a white powder, probably flour, on the bees to mark certain hives, so we knew which bees were doing the stealing and could do something about it. I would recommend bee keeping as a fun hobby to get a young person interested in nature and how we get honey.