About honey bees….

There is soooo much to know about these little aliens. Seriously, it’s bananas how intelligent and adaptive they are. Following my blog and my YouTube page will give you updates and insight into their world and my journey with them.

The basics are that there is one queen bee for every hive, unless you get a hive with a mother/daughter queen situation, but that only occurs in about 10% of hives. Each hive has 30,000 to 50,000 bees by mid-summer. The population declines in the fall down to about 15,000 bees and by the middle of winter it can range from 3,000-15,000 depending on a number of factors. Bees don’t hibernate, but they cluster in the hive, kind of like penguins in Antarctica. They have the ability to uncouple the muscles that flap their wings and then vibrate which creates heat. Since bees flap their wings 200 times per second then can generate a lot of heat. In fact, even if it’s -20 outside, the inner cluster will be at a comfortable 92-94 degrees. The queen stops laying eggs late fall and doesn’t start up again until early spring here in Maine. Once trees and grasses start producing pollen the queen will start building the population in the hive. The worker bees paste pollen to their hind legs (pollen baskets) and bring it back to the hive where it’s given to house bees that pack it into the comb. Pollen is protein for the bees, nectar is carbohydrates. By April the hive population is back up to 10,000-15,000 bees. The reason bees make honey is to survive the winter. Each full hive needs about 80-100 pounds of honey to survive the winter.