She became a little chub-bee.

7 out of 8 swarms are expected to not survive their first winter unless captured and rehived by a beekeeper. A few beekeepers in rural or outlying areas feel feel to let their hives swarm each year, for at least 2 reasons. First, this means that their hive will requeen itself each year with a young robust queen. Second, those swarms are just "returning to nature," right? Wrong, it's basically a death sentence unless that swarm is rehived by a beekeeper. For more about f

Wasa-bee!

The European honey bee, aka the Western honey bee, aka Apis mellifera, aka our beloved honey bee, evolved with European plants over millennia, so it should not surprise us that it pollinates them so well. Many of our favorite foods we brought from the Old World and also many weeds, often plants we now consider invasives. It makes sense that honey bees pollinate those better than natives. Some of the invasives are important pollen or nectar sources at various times of the year

The honeymoon.

Sting!

Most 'feral' swarms are escapees from managed hives. The closer you are to commercial apiaries and to the high density of hobby beekeepers in the Puget Sound area, the more likely you are to capture another beekeeper's swarm. Free bees is good, right? Not always. If the beekeeper was not managing hives well, feeding if needed, and treating for mites, those free bees may not be a reproductive swarm but may be absconding from unsurvivable conditions: hunger or Varroa levels so

A: The Great Gats-bee!

Dr. Samuel Ramsey showed this feeding on adults as well as on bee larvae in the capped stage and presented his research in the youtube presentation: Varroa feed on Fat Body - lecture at the INIB honey show 2019 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2plL5NIRcw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2plL5NIRcw This means that Varroa do not have a "phoretic stage" when they are attached to adult honey bees because a phoretic stage does not include feeding on the host used as transpo

Until recently, it was widely published that V. destructor fed on the hemolymph ("bee blood") of capped bee larvae as they metamorphosed into adults. Under the wax capping of the pupal stage, the Varroa females feed on the bee larvae and lay their eggs which develop, mature and mate before the newly formed adult bees emerge. However, it is not the "blood" of the larvae on which the Varroa feed, but on the fat bodies of the larvae. The Varroa insert their mouthparts into

For raising and sending veiled threats.

Once Apis mellifera returns to brood raising after its winter brood break, the workers must maintain temps in the low 90s F to keep eggs, larvae and pupae alive. An Apis mellifera colony maintains its body temp in winter, not going into hibernation or dormancy or lowering body temp to survive, but staying active and actually generating and holding heat with a clustering behavior unknown in other insects. At the center of the cluster, the queen must be kept close to 68-70 deg

B's

Seriously! If you would like to learn how to inseminate honey bee queens, workshops are offered at Washington State University's Bee Lab and at many other locations throughout the US.

Too much smoking is bad for your hive health!

Other insects build their nests/homes of materials they collect and sometimes supplement with a secretion such as saliva, but only honey bees excrete their main construction material - wax. Each worker bee has 8 wax glands on the ventral side of her abdomen which start producing wax about 12 days after she emerges as an adult from her pupal cocoon. Her wax production is at its highest for about the next week; then she tends to move onto other duties in the hive.

Because she found her honey!

Sting operations.

Other insects we may use as food (entomophagy), eating their larvae or adults, but only bees make honey, a food both they and we eat.

“I’ve ‘pollen’ and can’t get up!”