How is beeswax made and what is it good for (08/19/2010)
(...) Another way to conceptualize this is that ten thousand bees can produce about one pound of beeswax in three days. Over eight million pounds of beeswax are produced each year, mostly to be used as an ingredient in industrial lubricants, salves, ointments, furniture polish, ski wax, crayons, adhesives, inks, varnish, insulation, figurines, sculptures, and, of course, candles. When purified, beeswax has a high melting point (140 degrees Fahrenheit), which has an advantage over other waxes for applications in manufacturing. (...)

Types of honey and benefits for human health (08/19/2010)
(...) Crystallized or whipped honey is the most preferred form of honey in many places in Europe, while Americans tend to prefer liquid honey. Is honey good for you? Honey never spoils (if it is stored properly) and contains a surprisingly high level of antioxidants, non-nutritive agents that can slow destructive chemical reactions in food and animal tissues. A recent survey of a variety of monofloral honeys determined that, in general, the darker the honey, the higher the value of its antioxidant content. (...)

Which types of honey can be toxic (08/19/2010)
(...) Flowers in the Sumac genus Rhus make nectar that produces dark red honey (this includes Rhus vernix, poison sumac; and Rhus toxicodendron, poison ivy), but this honey is not harmful to people. Green or unripe honey from a few plants can cause an allergic reaction in some people, and in rare cases, honey results in an allergic reaction due to contamination with pollen allergens. Honey should be considered in any patient with a food allergy that cannot be identified, because if honey is an ingredient, the patient may be having a reaction to pollen allergens in the honey. (...)

Can bee swarming be predicted (08/19/2010)
(...) The scout bees return to where the swarm is waiting, and they "report" on the places they have found, using the waggle dance, and somehow a spot is selected. They prefer certain characteristics for a new cavity, including ample volume, and a dry space high off the ground. A consensus on the choice of a new location is reached by the scouts using a still-tobe- understood process. (...)

How do bees find flowers and their way back to the hive (08/19/2010)
(...) The second type of information, place or location, must also be learned. Bees recognize visual landmarks in the environment, such as tree lines, buildings, landscape features like hills or ridges, and use those images to build a map of their world. In short, bees have the ability to "dead reckon" after a scouting trip. (...)

What makes bees sting and are there killer bees (08/19/2010)
(...) Do killer bees really exist? Africanized honey bees are known popularly as "killer bees," although their venom is no more toxic than that of the common European honey bee. They are dangerous because they can be very aggressive when their colony is disturbed and sometimes thousands at a time will sting one victim, flooding the person or animal with multiple doses of venom that can reach highly toxic levels. Although many people can survive an attack like this, it can be lethal to children or physically vulnerable adults. (...)

How dangerous is it to be stung by a bee (08/19/2010)
(...) The amount of venom injected in such an attack can be so large that it can be lethal. The amount of venom in a single honey bee sting, by comparison, is tiny. What is bee venom? Venom is a complex mixture of chemicals, including a toxic protein called melittin, which bursts blood vessels and damages tissues. (...)

Bee playflight behavior and threats to bees (08/19/2010)
(...) Without playflight behavior, bees cannot learn to navigate. What triggers the behavior is unknown, but we do know that it typically happens between 1 p.m. (...)

Bees also have parasites and insects that molest them (08/19/2010)
(...) Tracheal mites Tracheal mites, Acarapis woodi, are small, spider-like endoparasites that infest the breathing tubes, or trachea, of honey bees, feeding on a bee's hemolymph from inside the bee's body. Dense infestations of tracheal mites can result in colony death during the winter months because, with many mites in the trachea, the bees cannot breathe normally and aren't able to regulate the colony's temperature. Jon Harrison and his colleagues at Arizona State University studied the impact of mite infestation on the breathing of bees. (...)

What viruses affect bee colonies (08/19/2010)
(...) Biologist Adam Stow and his colleagues in Australia washed off the protective coatings from the bodies of a variety of bees that ranged from very social to solitary. They applied a solution made from each species' coating to staph bacterium, Staphlococcus aureus, and found that the antimicrobial coating from the most social bees was 314 times stronger than that from the most solitary bees. Even the most mildly social bees were 10 times better protected than the solitary bees. (...)

Can beekeeping be dangerous for beekeepers (08/19/2010)
(...) Conditions that can destabilize a colony are a shortage of food, the proximity of pesticides or other chemicals, too much or too little water (water stress), disease, and overcrowding. What does a beekeeper's hive look like? In the United States, the standard hive used by beekeepers is called a Langstroth hive, named after the person who discovered the "bee space" - the size of the space that the bees prefer between combs. An important feature of the Langstroth colony is its modularity, which means that the basic features of the colony are exchangeable, replaceable, moveable, and expandable. (...)

How to manage a bee hive and collect the honey (08/19/2010)
(...) How does a beekeeper take honey from a hive? In past centuries, taking honey from wild colonies usually involved subduing the bees with smoke and breaking open the area of the hive where the colony was located. The honeycombs were torn out and destroyed along with the eggs and larvae. The honey was strained through a sieve or a basket to remove the broken pieces of comb and any other solids from the liquid honey. (...)

How do bees collect nectar and what about buzz pollination (08/19/2010)
(...) Farmers have realized that bumble bees and other sonicating bees (bees that produce resonant vibrations) are extremely efficient as "buzz" pollinators, and imported bumble bees are now widely used as the primary pollinators for greenhouse tomatoes and other self-fertilizing fruit such as kiwis (also known as Chinese gooseberries), rape, field beans, raspberries, and currants. To release the pollen in these flowers, bumble bees grasp the tubular anthers of the plant containing the pollen and rapidly vibrate the flight muscles of the thorax, causing the pollen to be dislodged. The pollen is carried on their hairs to the stigma of another plant, resulting in fertilization. (...)

How is honey made out of flower nectar (08/19/2010)
(...) It usually contains vitamins B6 and C, thiamin, niacin, riboflavin, and pantothenic acid, and it may have traces of essential minerals such as calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, sodium, zinc, and several different amino acids. It also contains antioxidants and is fat free. Honey that has been adequately dehydrated can be safely stored for long periods of time. (...)

What is honeydew and how much do bees work for making honey (08/19/2010)
(...) They have to fly approximately fifty-five thousand miles back and forth from flowers to hive to gather enough nectar for that one jar, and to make one gallon of honey they have to fly the distance to the moon and back. How much honey a hive produces varies greatly, depending on the climate, location, weather, and general health of the bees, but the amount ranges from about fifty pounds to as much as two hundred pounds in a year. How much honey is gathered in the United States every year? About 150 million pounds of honey are obtained each year in the United States from commercial sources. (...)

When do bees leave their hive and what is swarming (08/19/2010)
(...) What is swarming? Swarming is a natural process by which a new colony is formed. When a hive becomes overcrowded, the worker bees instinctively know that it is time to swarm and to raise a new queen. Several large cells are created around fertilized eggs laid by the queen. (...)

Which bees migrate and how far can they fly (08/19/2010)
(...) Most foragers concentrate on food sources that are within about two miles from their nest, depending on the availability of local flowers, but when hives are located far from food sources, bees can fly longer distances. In a classic series of experiments to study how far bees can fly, honey bees are trained to feed from artificial flowers laced with a sugar solution. When the feeders are gradually moved away from the hive with feeding bees on them, observations by Karl von Frisch and his many students indicate that bees can travel up to twelve miles from the nest to obtain food. (...)

Which bees sting and how do they do it (08/19/2010)
(...) What does it feel like to be stung by a bee? Though the amount of venom in a honey bee sting is small, it can cause a great deal of discomfort and occasional harm. Some describe a bee sting as similar to a car door slamming on your fingers. Others describe it as feeling like touching a hot match. (...)

Why does a bee die after it has stung somebody (08/19/2010)
(...) G. Carlson described at least two species within the Oxytrigona genus that secrete caustic salivary substances made up of formic acids and other defensive chemicals, making their bite extremely uncomfortable. The stingless bee Trigona fulviventris marks potential predators with a chemical secretion that elicits additional bees to react defensively by buzzing, biting, and hair pulling. (...)

Can collecting venom from a bee kill it (08/19/2010)
(...) How can you avoid being stung by a bee? The best way not to be stung by a bee is to stay away from bee colonies, because bees are very reluctant to sting unless their nest is threatened or disturbed. For the most part, it is easy to avoid honey bee nests because they tend to live in managed colonies, which are typically large, white boxes. Occasionally, people will be surprised to find themselves near a bumblebee nest in the ground. (...)

How do bees survive difficult weather conditions (08/19/2010)
(...) L. Fahrenholz and colleagues at the University of Berlin found that if the central temperature falls below about 15 degrees Celsius (59 degrees Fahrenheit) and the peripheral temperature is even lower, the bees are in danger. The colony is more stable in the winter because the queen stops laying eggs and there are no fragile larvae requiring constant care and feeding. (...)

Which animals hunt and eat bees (08/19/2010)
(...) Although they are drab in color, it is said that honeyguides attract the attention of a larger vertebrate predator of bees (such as a sun bear, a honey badger, or even a human) using a distinctive call. The bird will then hop around, call again, and then fly a short distance away and resume calling. In this way, the honeyguide earned its name - it guides the larger mammal to a bee colony and dines on the leftovers after the mammal has endured the danger of opening the nest. (...)

How can I treat a sick bee colony (08/19/2010)
(...) In the case of both infections, the larvae ingest the bacteria along with the brood food, and the bacteria then multiply rapidly in the gut of the larvae, causing death in a few days. Hive bees that clean the nest spread the infection, and even the honey becomes contaminated and spreads the disease. What is dysentery for a bee? Honey bees are very clean animals and usually only eliminate wastes when they fly outside of the colony. (...)

What differences are there between bee hives (08/19/2010)
(...) Bees entered a skep through a small door along the bottom edge of the basket, and due to the design, the beekeeper would have to destroy the entire colony when harvesting honey from these structures. Currently, skeps are purely decorative, and in many municipalities it is illegal to keep bees in skeps or in other non-traditional hives because they are impossible to inspect for bee health. Bee skeps inspired the iconic 1960s "beehive" hairdo. (...)

How can beekeepers stop the bees from swarming (08/19/2010)
(...) If the queen is killed accidentally, the workers may be able to rear a replacement queen from a newly laid egg. Under some circumstances, the beekeeper may want to replace the queen with one that has particular characteristics, such as being a better egg layer, but if a new queen is released directly into a bee colony, the workers will treat her like a stranger and forcibly remove her from the colony and possibly kill her. Normally, the guard bees learn the odor of their own colony members and prevent bees from other colonies from entering the hive. (...)

How exactly is a queen bee mating (08/17/2010)
(...) The ejaculation separates the drone from the queen, and he dies shortly after mating. When is a queen mating? Observers report that they can tell when a queen bee is mating nearby because of the large number of dying drones that drop to the ground, sometimes accompanied by a noise like popcorn popping. The drone's severed genitals may act as a temporary vaginal plug, designed to allow time for the drone's sperm to enter the queen's system, but the queen or a subsequent suitor can dislodge the plug, so no drone is guaranteed exclusivity. (...)

What is royal jelly and why do only queen bees eat it (08/17/2010)
(...) When the worker bees sense that the colony's resident queen is failing, they respond by creating some larger-than-usual cells, called queen cups, in the brood comb and encouraging her to lay eggs in them, so they can begin to rear a few new queens. A new queen must quickly supercede or replace the old queen if the colony is to survive. The worker bees produce royal jelly from a specialized gland (the hypopharyngeal gland) in the head, and they deposit a steady supply of it into the especially large cell where the queen larva is developing. (...)

How many bees are there in a hive and how do they build their nest (08/17/2010)
(...) As a part of the preparation for swarming, the bees will have consumed large quantities of nectar or honey, which primes their wax-producing glands. These bits of wax are called wax scales. They are chewed and sculpted into the familiar honeycomb pattern. (...)

How does queen bee control an entire hive (08/17/2010)
(...) It signals to them, in combination with a chemical marker the queen deposits on her eggs and the presence of an adequate number of larvae, that the queen's egg laying and brood development is going well, and it influences the workers to exercise reproductive self-restraint. In the European honey bee colonies that they studied, Madeleine Beekman and Benjamin Oldroyd found that approximately 1 percent of the workers had active ovaries and were able to lay eggs. Somehow their ovaries had become activated despite all the cues to the contrary, but if they actually produced eggs, the eggs would most likely be removed, destroyed, or eaten by other workers because they lacked the queen's mark. (...)

How do bees make propolis and what is it good for (08/17/2010)
(...) New research suggests that bees thrive with increased ventilation, and it seems that propolis may be more important in reinforcing the structure of the hive and making the hive more defensible. Bees have also been known to use propolis and wax to entomb the carcass of an intruder (like a mouse) that has died after breaking into the hive during the winter. Normally, bees carry waste out of the hive, but because a mouse is too large to remove from the hive, they effectively mummify it. (...)

How is flower pollination done by bees (08/17/2010)
(...) Specifically, honey bees' pollination activities are important for almonds, apples, blackberries, blueberries, melons, cherries, peaches, pears, nectarines, cucumbers, cranberries, and soybeans. Honey bees pollinate the bulk of these crops, which are worth more than fifteen billion dollars to the U.S. (...)

Can farmers make bees pollinate their crops (08/17/2010)
(...) Although the transfer of pollen is always unintentional, a honey bee that is deliberately gathering pollen is up to ten times more efficient as a pollinator than one that is primarily gathering nectar, so commercial beekeepers try to manage their hives so that the bees are in this pollen-gathering state when their "money" crops are in bloom. Close to one million honey bee hives are needed in California in the spring when the almond orchards are in bloom. The apple trees in New York require about thirty thousand hives, and the blueberry crop in Maine requires about fifty thousand hives each year. (...)

Which bees mate and how do they attract a mate (08/17/2010)
(...) She mates multiple times shortly after she emerges from the pupal stage, storing up enough sperm to keep laying fertilized eggs for the rest of her life. The queen releases a pheromone that suppresses the development of the reproductive systems of the female worker bees. This chemical keeps the workers from becoming reproductively viable, and the queen's eggs and larvae reinforce her message with chemicals that they pass along to the attending workers, signaling that the queen is providing the colony with an adequate supply of new workers. (...)

Queen bees mate with more drones at the same time (08/17/2010)
(...) The multi-father colonies were healthier, suffered from much less parasitism than the single-father colonies, and were twice as prolific, further confirmation of the benefits of genetic diversity. How many eggs does a honey bee queen lay in a day? A honey bee queen can lay fifteen hundred to three thousand eggs on a good day, and she can lay as many as half a million eggs in her two- or three-year lifetime. Her eggs are only reared to adulthood if there are enough workers to feed and incubate them. (...)

How bees choose their queen and how bees determine their gender (08/17/2010)
(...) But if the queen has mated with a male who has a version of the sex-determining gene that is identical to hers, the fertilized eggs produced from his sperm that have two identical sex-determining genes will yield sterile male offspring, and these drones will be eaten by females in the colony since they cannot reproduce and therefore serve no purpose. Multiple matings reduce the proportion of sterile males that will be produced because not all mates will have a matching sex-determining gene. How is the queen bee chosen? There is no election process to become the new queen: she is not chosen, but presents the best traits among the queens that emerge. (...)

What do bees do during the day and the night (08/17/2010)
(...) European honey bees can't see well enough to forage at night, so this is when some honey bee foragers typically sleep. Barrett Klein working with Tom Seeley determined that honey bees shift their foraging schedules depending on when resources are available, and this dictates to some degree when they can sleep. Stefan Sauer and colleagues experimentally deprived foragers of sleep for a twelve-hour period in order to study their responses to the lack of sleep. (...)

Why do bees kill their queen after a certain time (08/17/2010)
(...) The sheet of wax that forms the base of the comb hangs vertically from the ceiling of the nest, and the cells fit together snugly and are arranged horizontally so their contents don't spill out, conserving space and maximizing storage capacity. Stephen Pratt, now on the faculty at Arizona State University, explored the question of how a group of thousands of worker bees with limited information can proceed to build a pattern of comb that is best suited to the needs of the entire colony. What are the signals and cues that guide their collective decision making? After a swarm settles in a new nest site there is an initial surge of comb construction to provide cells for new brood and food storage. (...)

What happens in a bee hive round the year (08/17/2010)
(...) By some time in the very early spring, the queen begins laying eggs (brood production), as many as several hundred each day as long as there are ample supplies of honey and pollen remaining in the nest's storage cells and there are environmental signals that fresh supplies will soon become available as the flowers begin to come into bloom and there are enough workers to keep the eggs warm. If food is scarce, her egg-laying activity level is reduced, creating an ongoing seasonal balance between the food supply and the numbers of eggs, larvae, and pupae. Assuming the queen is healthy as the warm weather sets in, the bees will become very active, filling the storage cells with nectar, attending to the brood, and carrying out all the normal activities of the colony. (...)

How are bees attracted to flowers and which ones do they prefer (08/17/2010)
(...) fasciata with its dark brown body preferred shady locations. Mason bees, Chalicodoma sicula, studied by Pat Willmer in an arid area of Israel preferred more dilute nectar, and in that habitat collecting adequate amounts of water from flowers was more vital even than the energy reward of nectar. There are certain flowers that bees learn to avoid. (...)

What is special about bees living in colonies (08/15/2010)
(...) Honey bees are specialized to be efficient pollinators, engaging in behaviors and having physical attributes (pollen baskets on their legs, for example) that are specifically aimed at efficiently gathering nectar and pollen to feed their brood. Given the nickname "pollen pigs" by some afficionados, honey bees are generalists in that they visit an exceptional diversity of plants to acquire food for their family. In the course of their foraging, they incidentally fertilize a wide range of plants, making it possible for the plants to reproduce and bear fruit. (...)