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General maintenance requires periodic inspections during the warm months to make sure your queen is laying eggs, your workers are building up honey stores, and your colony has enough space to expand. In the cold months, the colony clusters and eats through their honey stores, only emerging when the temperature is above freezing to eliminate waste. Inspections are discouraged during this time to keep from releasing precious heat from the hive. Management time and style will depend on your climate, your hive style, and your particular bees. All colonies are unique, and each beekeeper will have a different experience. All beekeepers get stung at some point. For example, a bee might end up in the fold of your clothing, go unnoticed, and be unable to get out. Honeybees are mostly very docile, and stinging is a last resort, since once they sting, they die.
Bees are directly influenced by their environment, therefore, their behavior and success varies greatly across climates. For instance, the busy foraging season for bees will be much longer in the warmer south than it will be in the north. Familiarize yourself with what beekeeping looks like in your neck of the woods. We recommend joining your local beekeepers club or association, and finding an experienced mentor in your area.
The first step to becoming a successful beekeeper is to learn as much as you can about the bees themselves. Considering all the variables that may affect your honeybees, you may see something different every time you get into your hive. In order to make appropriate management decisions, beekeepers must be flexible in their ability to figure out why bees are behaving a certain way, and how certain actions may impact their well being. We carry dozens of books that cover the basics. Pick one (or three) up to begin building a solid foundation of beekeeping knowledge.
Apis mellifera, or the European honeybee is the most commonly kept species, and the only species kept in America. They are just 1 species out of 20,000 known bee species worldwide. North America alone is home to 4,400 bee species including social bumblebee colonies, solitary tunnel nesting bees, and solitary ground nesting bees. Honeybees are the only insect that store food in excess. Their part in high-value commodity production (honey and wax) encouraged their introduction to America in the late 1600’s by Europeans. In America today, the value of honeybees has only increased, as they have become the linchpin in the current agricultural system as pollinators. 30% of the world’s most common food crops require honeybee pollination-services.
Each hive will have 1 queen bee who is the only reproductive individual in the colony. She leaves the hive under two circumstances: as a virgin queen to mate, and in some cases, as an experienced queen with a swarm. On mating flights the queen locates a “drone congregation area” to mate with up to 80 drones before returning to the hive. She will store all this sperm touse for the rest of her life, which can last up to 5 or 6 years. The queen will lay all of the eggs for the colony, “deciding” when to lay drones (unfertilized eggs), or workers (fertilized eggs).
Worker bees are sterile females who do all of the foraging, feeding of young, honey production and storage, wax production, cleaning, and defending the hive against intruders. Each worker bee will do a variety of jobs in her lifetime, which can last about 4-6 weeks during the active season. As they age, their duties will become riskier, and require venturing further from the hive.
The only male bees in the colony are drones. Their sole purpose is to spread the genetics of the colony by mating with virgin queens from other colonies. Once they mate, they die successful bees. Unsuccessful drones return to the hive to eat honey and pollen. Once swarm season is over, drones become a drain on resources inside the hive, and are evicted by workers.
