Busy Bees

I learnt the basics to keeping honey bees recently. They are such cute little characters, going about their business, busy as can be.

We had a brand new hive to set up and the bee keeper came with his starter box for us to transfer over. First off, a few puffs of smoke to ‘calm them down’. In fact, it doesn’t calm them down, it sends them into a state of panic because they think a bushfire is coming, so they start gorging on their honey so they have lots of fuel to keep them going and set up a new hive when they leave. But it means they aren’t interested in us so intention achieved I guess.

Next step, transfer each ‘frame’ from the original box or hive to the new hive. It’s important they go in the same order as they came out, because honey bees organise their hive by filling all the central cells with babies (eggs which hatch to larvae which then turn into bees) and then surround that ball with both nectar (honey) and pollen cells. This is their food source (honey = carbs, pollen = protein) and also serves to keep the babies perfectly insulated to 36 degrees, regardless of the temp outside. In the case of an emergency though, a bee can shed it’s wings, crawl into the cells and vibrate their ex-wing muscles to warm up the babies. The bee can’t reattach their wings so that’s it for them. They stay in the hive. But the babies are safe. It’s all about the safety of the hive. Pure dedication!

Excuse the poor quality mobile phone snaps! You can see the outer cells at the top are filled with honey, and the inner ones are where the babies are.

Whilst transferring the frames we kept an eagle eye out for the queen. She’s a little bit bigger. But it’s very much Where’s Wally in a hive of a bazillion bees. We finally found her, marked with a splash of yellow paint which apparently made her easier to spot, and made sure she was in the new hive and then the rest of the bees in the old hive were unceremoniously dumped in the top of the new hive. Pop the lid on and process complete! They were ready to forage.

An even worse quality cropped mobile phone photo. But this is Queen Bee with her fancy yellow makeup.

Hive full of bees.

Bees have a fabulous internal homing beacon and can fly for kilometers, returning exactly to where they left. As they leave the hive they fly upwards, spiralling slowly to set their internal GPS. If you happen to shift their home a bit whilst they’re gone, they’ll get confused when they return and need to rely on pheromones to find the door! I guess despite being able to see ultraviolet light, their regular eyesight isn’t great?

Apparently they do recognise large black objects though. Bees are much more likely to sting you if you wear dark colours, hence why all bee suits are in pale colours! It might be because black reminds them of bears which are a natural predator in the wild. Bears (the brown and black kind, not the Winnie-the-Pooh kind) attack the whole hive, eating the honey and the bees - devastation! So the bees will attack in the hopes of deterring their visitor and protecting the hive.