The honey bee is a remarkable insect in many different ways. The biology of the honey bee reveals just how special it is and what makes it different to other insects. Here you can learn more about the features of the honey bee and some honey bee key facts about what makes it so special…
In any hive there are three types of honey bee: a single queen; thousands of female worker beesand, in the summer, hundreds of male drones. The drone bee does no work and in the early autumn they are evicted by the workers and die.
It is amazing to see how colonies of bees stick together, despite the vast distances each worker must travel in order to serve the hive. It is now known that bees use the position of the sun to help them know where they are and where they need to go back to; there is now some evidence of sensitivity to the earth’s magnetic field too. It is worth saying too that bees’ eyes are sensitive to polarized light which penetrates through even thick cloud so they are able to ‘see’ the sun, even when the weather is poor.
It is often asked how – or if – bees are awake or asleep. Bees do not sleep – but they do remain motionless to preserve vital energy for the next day of foraging. During the day, and out on their travels, bees eyes can detect a wide array of colour. Their eyes are sensitive more to the blue end of the spectrum and into ultra violet. Flowers reflect large amounts of ultra violet light and to a bee will be very bright. Curiously, when it comes to red, bees are totally blind.
The distance each bee flies in its life is astonishing. It is possible for forager bees to fly about 3 miles for food, however an average distance would be less than a mile from the hive. A strong colony therefore flies the equivalent distance from Earth to the Moon everyday.
The normal top speed of a worker would be about 15-20mph (21-28km/h) when flying to a food source and about 12mph (17km/h) when returning with nectar, pollen, propolis (resin collected from tree buds)or water.
There are a number of diseases affecting bees, some more serious than others. They are not infectious to humans but dangerous for the bee. Certain bee diseases are even notifiable to the Government.
The most serious are AFB (American Foul Brood) and EFB (European Foul Brood), which affect the larva in the hive. These are normally treated by destroying the colony by burning it. If left alone, the disease can spread throughout out the whole apiary and affect surrounding beekeepers. Spores from AFB can remain dormant for over 50 years in old beekeeping equipment and cause problems decades later.
The most alarming threat to honey bees in the UK right now is the potential arrival to Mainland Britain of Asian Hornet. Please see here to learn how to help beekeepers by being aware of them and keeping an eye out.
Honey bees mix plant pollen with water to form a type of bread that is fed to the growing larvae. It provides a rich source of protein and fat whilst honey provides energy (carbohydrate). Bees collect about 20kg of pollen every year - that’s 1 million pollen loads at 20mg per trip!
Get planting!
We need people to plant more flowers wherever they live – the more flowers, the more food (forage) for the honey bees. Greater food sources enable honey bees to be much stronger in the face of disease. You can find a comprehensive guide to planting here which tells you which pollen will be available when the bees need it throughout the year.
A bee only stings under two conditions. To protect the colony or when frightened. When a bee stings, barbs in the lance of the sting cause it to firmly stick into the victim pulling out the venom sacs and glands when the bee is shaken off. The venom sac muscles continue to pump after these organs have been torn from the dying bee.
Only the female workers and the queen can sting, the queen having a smooth sting which she uses to kill other queens, while surviving herself.
Bees use the position of the sun to navigate and there is evidence of their sensitivity to the earth’s magnetic field. Also bees' eyes are sensitive to polarized light, which penetrates through even thick cloud, so bees are able to ‘see’ the sun in poor weather.
As well as two compound eyes on either side of its head the bee has three ‘ocelli’ on top of its head. The ocelli (collective noun for all 3 eyes) can detect the transition from darkness to light. If the horizon moves up it means the bee is flying down so it can rotate the angle of its wings to compensate. In this way the bee can make sure it’s flying along a flat plain to achieve a greater distance over a shorter space of time.
Yes, bees' eyes are sensitive more to the blue end of the light spectrum and into ultraviolet. Flowers reflect large amounts of ultraviolet light and will appear very bright to a bee. Bees are totally red blind.
The normal top speed of a worker would be about 15-20 mph (21-28 km/h), when flying to a food source, and about 12 mph (17 km/h), when returning laden down with nectar, pollen, propolis or water.
Shop for honey and you'll see that some are lighter, others are darker. In general, the darker the honey, the better its antibacterial and antioxidant power. Honey was known to the Greeks as the "food of the Gods."
Honey was used in WWI to treat soldiers wounds. It is still used in wound dressings today - medical grade honey is found to work against bacteria and fungi by creating a moist healing environment that is antibacterial in nature.
Why Do Bees Make Honey?
Honey bees are special in that they overwinter as a colony, unlike wasps and bumblebees (see Biology). The colony does not hibernate but stays active and clusters together to stay warm. This requires a lot of food, which is stored during the summer. Although a hive only needs 20-30 lb of honey to survive an average winter, the bees are capable of collecting much more, if given storage space. This is what the beekeeper wants them to do.
Bees have been producing honey in the same way for over one hundred and fifty million years
How Much Honey Can One Beehive Produce?
One hive can produce 60 lb (27 kg) or more in a good season, however an average hive would be around 25 lb (11 kg) surplus.
Bees fly about 55,000 miles to make just one pound of honey, that’s 2.2 times around the world. Romans used honey instead of gold to pay their taxes.
How Does The Beekeeper Get The Honey From The Bees?
The queen bee is kept below the upper boxes(called ‘supers’) in the hive by a wire or plastic grid (called a ‘queen excluder’), which the queen is too large to fit through. As the bees cannot raise brood above the queen excluder, only honey is stored in the supers. As the season progresses the beekeeper adds more supers until the time to harvest the honey.
A special one-way valve is then fitted in place of the queen excluder and gradually all the bees are forced into the lowest part of the hive. The beekeeper can then simply lift off the ‘super’ boxes containing the honey comb. The honey is extracted from the comb using centrifugal force in a machine called a spinner, which looks like an old-fashioned upright spin dryer.
Do The Bees Miss The Honey That Is Taken?
No. A strong colony can produce 2-3 times more honey than it needs. If necessary the beekeeper can feed sugar syrup in the autumn to supplement for the loss of honey.
Why Are Some Types Of Honey Clear And Runny And Other Types Opaque And Hard?
The type of honey made by the bees is dependent on the types of foliage and flowers available to the bees. Crops such as oil seed rape (the bright yellow fields in the spring) produce large quantities of honey that sets very hard, so hard that the bees cannot use it in the winter; garden flowers tend to give a clear liquid honey. If the beekeeper wants to produce a monofloral honey, e.g. pure clover, orange blossom, etc, the beehive is put out of range from other floral sources. This can be difficult for the hobby beekeeper, who normally produces a blend of the season’s honey. In the autumn, some beekeepers move their hives onto the moors to harvest the nectar from wild heather. Heather honey is thought to be the king of honeys and has a clear jelly consistency.
How Do Bees Make Honey?
Bees take nectar, which is a sweet sticky substance exuded by most flowers and some insects (honeydew), and mix it with enzymes from glands in their mouths. This nectar/enzyme mix is stored in hexagonal wax honey comb until the water content has been reduced to around 17%. When this level is reached, the cell is capped over with a thin layer of wax to seal it until the bees need it. This capping indicates to the beekeeper that the honey can be harvested. Capped honey can keep almost indefinitely. For the school swot: Sucrose (nectar) + inverters (bee enzyme) = fructose + glucose = honey. Perfectly edible honey comb was found in the tombs of the Pharaohs, over three thousand years old. How’s that for ‘Best Before Dates’.
Does Honey Contain Additives?
Unfortunately there is a lot of mass-produced adulterated honey around at the moment. The most prevalent problems include:
- dilution with different syrups
- harvesting immature honey
- using ion-exchange resins to lighten colour
- mislabelling origin
If you buy your honey direct from a local producer in the UK, these problems shouldn't exist. It should have it's source clearly labelled and be in its 'raw' form i.e nothing added to it, simply filtered to remove the comb and wax after spinning. You can find your local branch to buy honey from here.
Melissopalynology
Melissopalynology is the study of pollen in honey. It originates from the Greek, Melisso for honey and Palynology for study of small particles. Palynology is a very established science, allowing the vegetative landscape over millions of years to be analysed through the pollen extracted from soil samples. However, it is not just limited to analysis of historical landscapes, it is equally applied to our modern-day environment, for example in solving criminal cases or predicting hay fever levels (Leitch and Salvage, BBKA News 2018).
In the height of Summer there is an average of 35 / 40,000 bees in the hive. Over the Winter this falls to around 5,000.
Beeswax
Made from the honeycomb of the honeybee, beeswax is the purest and most natural of all waxes. For each pound of beeswax provided by a honey bee, the bee visits over 30 million flowers. To produce one pound of wax requires the bees to consume about eight to ten pounds of honey. They secrete the beeswax from the underside of their abdomens, and then use the wax to construct a honeycomb.
The youngest bees cluster in large numbers to raise their body temperature. Wax-producing glands under their abdomens slowly secrete slivers of wax about the size of a pinhead. Other worker bees harvest these wax scales and take them to the part of the hive requiring the new wax. Bees use about 6 lb of honey to produce 1 lb of wax.
Bee bread
'Edible grade' pollen or 'bee bread' is a mixture of plant pollen and honey, which bees mould into granules and store in their honeycombs. Plant pollen can make you sneeze and have a runny nose and eyes if you are allergic to it, but people eat bee bread to help try and stop this.
Many Olympic athletes eat bee bread in a bid to strengthen their immune system, increases oxygen intake, boosts performance and helps them recover quicker after training.
Mead
Before people discovered how to brew beer and make wine, they fermented honey with water and yeast to make the first alcoholic drink - mead. Some people call it the 'Nectar of the Gods'. Others think it tasted like cough mixture, which may have to do with the honeys healing properties.
Propolis
Propolis or bee glue is a resinous mixture that honey bees produce by mixing saliva and beeswax with exudate gathered from tree buds, sap flows, or other botanical sources. It is used as a sealant for unwanted open spaces in the hive. Propolis is used for small gaps, while larger spaces are usually filled with beeswax. Its colour varies depending on its botanical source, the most common being dark brown. Propolis is sticky at, and above, room temperature. At lower temperatures, it becomes hard and very brittle.
Propolis also has great medicinal qualities and can be added to alcohol to make tinctures to treat various ailments.
Royal Jelly
Royal jelly is the food fed to queen bee larvae. It is a creamy white colour and is very rich in proteins and fatty acids. It is produced by the mouth glands in young bees. Each queen needs only a teaspoon of royal jelly to thrive.
