An American pollen color chart is difficult to find. One of the reasons appears to be the size of the area of the United State, considering just the contiguous 48 states, and the number of climate and vegetative zones involved from the northern boreal zone to the subtropical. Our beekeepers (members of SnoKing Beekeepers Association) keep bees in Western Washington and find that pollen information to suit our cool maritime, temperate zone climate and vegetation can ofte

By volume, weight, or space occupied on frames. The size or weight difference between strains of honey bees – Italian, Russian, Carniolan, Caucasian - is minimal. So a half cup of bees is about 300, a pound is about 3500 and a densely covered deep frame is 1500 or more.

The easiest system I have found, which also cleans hive tools so that they can't transfer diseases to the next hive inspected is a tupperware spaghetti pasta container with rubbing alcohol. Place hive tool inside and lay the container on its side so the alcohol covers the tool. It doesn't take much alcohol to clean tool after tool this way and the tupperware top seals super well. Oh, the daffodils are just in the picture to hide the clutter in my house. And the J hook is my f

Beekeepers often observe their bees flying past nectar sources, sometimes the very flowers that those beekeepers have planted as pollinator forage!, to a single source the bees prefer. As beekeepers we can understand that the foraging population of a colony will collect nectar in the most efficient way, utilizing division of foraging duties, waggle dances, pheromones and all forms of communication to concentrate its efforts on a major, rewarding nectar flow. So, bees often p

If a beekeeper sees anything odd about brood or the bees in a hive, s/he may leave the hive tool used to inspect that hive on the inner cover before putting the outer cover back on. The next time opening that hive, the beekeeper is reminded that this is the hive under suspicion and is reminded not to use any other hive tool in that hive. Dedicated hive tools are an important strategy to avoid cross contamination of hives if a disease , particularly of the broodnest, might be

Clearly pounds and ounces aren't going to work, so we have to go metric. A single bee weighs 121 mg, about 1/10 of a gram.

If a forager goes very far from the hive, she must carry enough nectar in her crop for her to consume to make the trip out. If collecting pollen, she may need to use some of that nectar to help form and mold that pollen onto her corbiculae, and maybe even fuel her trip back.

The fat bees (bees with larger fat bodies) produced by the colony last fall are old now, putting the last of their life’s energy into raising the brood that replaces them. This changeover has already happened for many beekeepers in Western Washington. A hive has truly overwintered when that first brood successfully emerges as young, fuzzy new adults ready to take over from the aging, dying winter bees. Congratulations to all the beekeepers who had the patience to NOT open hiv

Worker bee life span during summer may only be 7 weeks, about 4 of them flying. During the winter some of the workers live 5 months or more. Drones live only one season if they fail to mate. If they mate, they die in the act. Queens have been shown to sometimes live for years but the average life span of queens appears to be decreasing.

By volume, weight, or space occupied on frames. The size or weight difference between strains of honey bees – Italian, Russian, Carniolan, Caucasian - is minimal. So a half cup of bees is about 300, a pound is about 3500 and a densely covered deep frame is 1500 or more.

Normally there is only one and she will battle with any other queen intruding or introduced into the hive in a stinging to the death duel. However, in large hives, particularly during the spring, beekeepers see more than one. Sometimes it is thought that the mother queen is being superseded by her daughter queen and eventually disappears. It may be that she duels with her daughter or that the workers eliminate her. The other time more than one queen can be found in a hiv

Yes, if the bee that stings is a worker bee, she will die shortly after stinging because the sting assembly separates from her body leaving an open wound. The sting assembly includes the stinger shaft, the glands and the muscles that pump the venom through the stinger. A queen bee survives after stinging and may sting repeatedly because her stinger is less barbed, allowing her to withdraw it without injury to her body.

The stinger should be removed as soon as possible by scraping it out, such as by using a finger nail or credit card. Squeezing the stinger, and attached venom pouch, may cause the release of more venom in to the skin. Do not continue to scrape or irritate the sting area because you may actually push bacteria on the skin surface into the sting wound and start an infection. One particular potentially troublesome bacteria found on normal skin is Staphylococcus aureus, comple

Bees secrete an anesthetic, 2-heptanone, from their mandibular glands. When guard bees break through the outer body covering of intruders, this secretion can enter the intruder’s body and cause temporary paralysis.

Bees can not pant; they don’t have lungs. However, bees do have membranes in their abdomen that act as diaphragms and aid in the flow of hemolymph inside their body, and aid in the movement of air through tracheal tubes and air sacs.

Two ways: from the production and consumption of bee bread and from the jelly fed to them by young bees at the jelly producing stage of their progression in duties, polyethism. This is the stage at which those young adults mix the secretions of their hypopharyngeal and mandibular glands, varying the secretion mix according to whether they are feeding larvae, queen, drones or workers. Bee bread is the other way that older larvae and adults get their protein. The bees fer

All castes (worker, queen, drone) emit pheromones. The tarsal gland secretion mentioned in a previous post also contains a trail pheromone, which workers leave on the forage they visit or at the hive entrance. This pheromone helps workers home in on the forage they may have found following the instructions of a waggle dance back at the hive. Returning to the hive, those foragers may again receive the homing signal of that pheromone at the hive entrance, along with others.

The 2 claws or hooks on each pretarsus (end segment of each leg), grip rough or penetrable surfaces so that makes it easy to move anywhere on those surfaces, including upside down. On slippery surfaces, a flexible pad between those 2 claws forms a sort of “suction” against those smooth surfaces with a secretion from a gland called the Arnhart or tarsal or arolium gland.

Adult bees can consume nectar directly but nectar is basically sugar water, plant sugar, but is almost completely carbohydrates. Just as every animal needs protein, so do all the bees in the hive. The protein is in the pollen. Bees are extremely efficient gatherers and storers of pollen. So what’s the problem with bees directly consuming pollen? There are obstacles: a “wasp waist”, the design of a bee’s gut, and the structure of pollen itself. Bee larvae don’t develop th

Apis mellifera seems to be a species obsessed with efficiency and temporal polyethism is efficient. Why is temporal polyethism so efficient in worker honey bees? Other social insect species and other social animal have division of labor. Some individuals may even perform multiple tasks in their lifetimes. However, A. mellifera raises this to a whole new level by continuing to change physiologically as an adult, after full metamorphosis (egg, larva, pupa, adult stage