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Learning About Beekeeping
How to Recognize The Bees In Your Hive
Learning about beekeeping includes learning to recognize the bee colony members including the queen, the worker and the drone.
Understanding the difference between these bees and the roles each play will help you better care for your colony.
The Crowning of a Queen
The queen is most important of all the bee colony members, for without her a hive will die within weeks.
Why? Because during the spring and summer months, the average life cycle of a bee is only a few weeks due to hardships and predators.
It is the queen's job to lay sufficient eggs to replace the up to 1,800 bees that die daily.
That's why one of the most important aspects of learning about beekeeping is learning to recognize your queen.
When a queen is too old or worse yet, there is no queen, workers will begin to produce a replacement from one of the bee colony members.
They select either an egg or a very young larva and feed her royal jelly throughout her larva stage.
In just a couple of weeks she is a fully developed queen, ready within days to mate.
She then leaves the colony to mate between 10 to 12 drones, all of whom will die in the process.
Afterward, she returns home to lay eggs – lots of them – for the rest of her life to produce more bee colony members.
A queen will lay anywhere from 1,500 to 2,500 eggs per day and can live up to five years.
She may take small rest periods of 5 or 10 minutes, but generally she lays eggs around the clock.
And you thought you had it rough!
Learning About Beekeeping
How to Recognize the Queen
The queen will be longer – usually one and a half times longer – and thinner than the workers.
Also, her wings will be shorter.
Her body will be more pale than the others, and she will have less pronounced stripes on her abdomen.
Just behind her head, she will also have a bald spot.
Learning about beekeeping includes remember these vital facts about your queen.
Beekeepers will often mark her with a colored dot so she can be easily recognized among the bee colony members.
Being able to spot your queen easily makes learning about beekeeping much easier.
Learning About Beekeeping
The Queen's Court
When learning about beekeeping, you should also learn to recognize your worker bees.
Your queen will be surrounded by workers who are known, naturally, as the royal court.
Every worker takes a turn in the court.
They feed her, touch her and rub their antennas over her.
By doing this, they will then spread her scent throughout the hive.
Learning About Beekeeping
The Worker
Workers are the go-to ladies of the bee colony members.
They are made up of female bees whose reproductive organs have not developed.
They are the smallest bees in the hive and do all the work.
A worker bee has pollen baskets, a honey stomach, wax glands and – unfortunately for us – a barbed sting.
One colony can have hundreds of thousands of workers.
In the winter, a worker can live up to 140 days, but in the summer, she will live for only 15 to 48 days.
If she isn't killed by predators or an accident, she will work herself to death within five weeks.
In the early days of her life, she feeds the queen, stores nectar and pollen brought in by other bees and cleans the hive.
When she is three weeks old, she will begin to leave the other bee colony members and eventually fly miles each day, to collect nectar and pollen and pollinate our gardens and orchards.
She will do this until she can no longer fly.
Then at the ripe old age of five weeks, she will leave the hive and die.
Learning About Beekeeping
The Drone
Male bees are the drones.
They are much larger and are a bit more square-shaped than the other bee colony members.
They do not have a sting, and their only job is to mate with the queen.
They will live anywhere from 21 to 32 days.
In many ways, drones are the Rodney Dangerfields of the bee colony members in that they don't get much respect.
In the fall, the worker bees will literally pick up the drones and toss them out of the hive.
If the drones try to return, the workers will refuse to let them back in.
Eventually, the drones give up and look for queens from other colonies with which to mate.
More Helpful Information on Keeping Bees
A great source of beekeeping supplies, information and ready-made beehives can be found by
clicking here.
Learn more about beekeeping with this e-book.
Want to learn how to stop the progression of Africanized or "killer" bees?
Become a beekeeper! Learn how.
Build your own backyard beehive. Here's how.
If you're ready to have your own source of the most healthful, nutritious honey available, consider becoming a homestead beekeeper.
Here's how.
A beekeeper can make money selling honey as well as a self-reliant source of food.
Here are other ways you can earn income off your land.
Harvest beeswax to make your own bath products.
Learn how.
Your own harvested beeswax can also be used to make your own candles.
Sell honey and other products at craft fairs.
Here's how.
Bees are not only a way to a far improved homesteading garden, they are also industrious, highly organized insects.
Learn about the different members of the bee colony.
Without the right equipment, beekeeping can be an extremely unpleasant task.
Here is a list of the important Beekeeping equipment you need to get started.
The right location for your bees is as important as the equipment you have on hand.
Here are some tips on finding the right location for your colony of bees.
Once you are an experienced homesteading beekeeper, you might want to increase your bee population by catching swarms.
Learn how.
Do you think you're ready to start beekeeping, but you don't know where to begin?
Here are some tips on getting started.
Is spring around the corner? These beekeeping basics will ensure your bees will survive the end of winter and produce plenty of honey for your this spring and summer.
Read more.
To keep bees you need the right housing to keep them happy and healthy.
Learn more.
Colony collapse disorder is a serious problem, causing hundreds of thousands of bees each year to simply vanish.
Fortunately, we homesteaders can ensure bees will survive for years to come.
Learn more.
Learn a low-cost way of building your own hive for in-comb honey.
Learn more.
Bees normally will do just fine in the winter, but a little extra help on your part will ensure a strong, healthy hive.
Learn more.
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