A Beekeeper’s Harvest

 

A jar of Bee Whyld's fireweed honey from 2015

Once the first frost hits and the flowers are done, it’s extraction time!! This is August here in the Yukon, and February over in New Zealand!

Those busy honey bees have done their part of the whole honey production. It’s now up to the beekeeper to get that delicious product to your table.

Although honey, in its most natural state can be sampled right at the hive, most people prefer it in a jar that is a little more convenient.

A full frame out of a super

As the bees continue to collect nectar and make honey all summer long, the beekeeper has been stacking boxes on bee hives to provide room for the bees to store this excess honey. These boxes, or supers, are what the beekeeper is going to take, or ‘pull.’ Since some hives take exception to sharing their honey stores, a beekeeper will usually start by puffing some smoke into the hive. Despite popular belief, it does not put the bees to sleep. What it does do, is mask the ‘alarm pheromone’ that is released when the hive is opened, and keeps the bees relatively calm and easy to work with.

Liz and Barb using hive tools to remove super

Liz removing bees from super

Our resourceful bees have literally sealed the boxes together with a sticky product they produce called propolis. No beekeeper is without a metal hive tool to pry the boxes apart. This is where things get a little heavy. A standard super can easily weigh 30 or more pounds when it's full of honey, and a large super can be well over 50 pounds. Once removed from the hive the super is stood on end and the remaining bees blown off the honey frames with a bee blower (similar to a super powered leaf blower.) We don’t want to bring any bees back with us, we want them all to stay with their hive.

Small and large supers waiting for extraction

With the bees removed, the supers are stacked in the back of a truck or trailer and hauled to the honey house, or extraction room. To prevent the honey from crystallizing (how fast honey crystallizes depends on the type of honey) the supers are kept warm until extraction begins.

It's best to have lots of help on hand for extraction day! Each frame is removed from the super and the caps cut or scraped off. A hot knife is usually used to accomplish this. The wax and honey removed with the knife will be kept and separated later.

Ruth and Courtney spinning

A frame in extractor waiting to be spun

The uncapped frame is placed in a honey spinner or extractor. The frames are spun and the honey removed from the comb hits the sides and drips to the bottom of the extractor.

Extractors come in many different sizes. From the little two-frame hand-powered extractor shown here to massive 80 frame extractors complete with automated uncapping as well!

This is the best part!! The tap at the bottom of the extractor is opened and fresh raw honey flows out! It is strained through cheesecloth or a colander to remove larger pieces of wax (or can also be left to sit for a few days as wax will float and can be removed then) before being poured, or tapped, into jars.

Freshly extracted raw honey

Honey ... Nectar of the Gods

Jars of honey sitting on working hive

Now that we know what everyone’s doing in the hive … let’s talk about one of the products from the hive … HONEY!!

Everyone is pretty familiar with this sweet tasting treat! But what is it? And where does it come from?

Notice her proboscis

Forager in a crocus

Remember our foraging bee, the older worker bee? She’s the one you spot busily buzzing from flower to flower. While she’s rummaging around in the flower, her proboscis, or straw-like tongue, is sipping up the minuscule droplets of sweet nectar the flower has to offer. This nectar is carried in a honey-stomach in her abdomen. Our industrious foraging worker will visit between 50 and 100 of the same type of flower before she is ready to return to the hive.

The nectar transfer

Enzymes in her honey stomach have already started the process of turning nectar into honey, but she can’t complete this process. Upon returning to her hive she goes in search of a waiting nurse bee. Our foraging bee will transfer the collected nectar to this younger bee. It is enzymes in her honey-stomach that finish the honey making process.

Once this is complete, our nurse bee will deposit the honey into one of the sterilized combs. She does this by entering the cell upside down and depositing the honey on the top of the cell wall so it can drip down. This technique helps to dry or dehydrate the honey. Honey must have a moisture content of 17.8% or less or … it will start to ferment and become mead! (More about this favorite subject in another post!!)

Worker bees cleaning up some honey

In moister climates, house bees need to help the dehydration process and will festoon, or fan (rapidly flap their wings to create air flow), over open honey cells. In drier climates, like southern Alberta and the Yukon, honey generally comes into the hive dry enough that this step can be skipped. Once filled and cured, the honey cell is capped with wax, and will keep for ever and ever!

Honey is the staple of a worker bee’s and drone’s diet. It is very important to the worker bees that they have produced enough honey to last the winter, or in warmer climates, to survive between nectar flows.

It is fortunate for those of us who love honey, that these hard working honey bees are so efficient. They usually make more honey than they need, and are generally willing to share some of their bounty with their beekeeper!

Capped honey at top of frame, open cells with honey below

Not ever, should this gift from the bees be taken for granted. I remain in awe, and truly thankful, every time I use honey in my coffee, tea or on a piece of toast. For one little honey bee only makes between 1/12 and ¼ teaspoon of honey in her entire lifetime (about six weeks). 

A 454 gram jar (one pound) of honey contains the nectar of two million flowers and an accumulation of 80,000 km (55,000 miles) of flying. It constitutes the life work of anywhere from 300 to 600 worker bees! Honey is pretty precious stuff!

A finished honey frame ready for extraction

    

The Queen – Ruler of the Honey Bee Hive … or is she?

A Carniolan (black) queen bee and her worker bee attendants                             Photo courtesy of MortonMolyneux©2014

With the worker bees performing a multitude of tasks to keep the hive running, and the drones doing their part to ensure the survival of the species, there are only two jobs left, and they both belong to the largest bee in the hive, the queen honey bee.

Her first job is to prevent the creation of another queen, and her second, is to create all those workers and drones.

How does she ensure she own survival?

A queen honey bee releases pheromones (smell) that the worker bees distribute from bee to bee throughout the hive on their antenna. As long as the queen’s pheromones are strong, and able to reach all the bees in the hive, her position remains secure.

One queen 60,000 bees!

Creating all the other bees in the hive is her full-time job! A honey bee hive can have easily, at the peak of the nectar flow, have 60,000 bees or more. That’s a lot of eggs to lay!

This frame shows capped worker bee cells

A queen honey bee is capable of laying (have your calculator ready!) up to 2000 eggs a day! Given she has a lifespan of three to five years … that makes for an incredible amount of workers and drones! A queen bee’s egg-laying rate is directly related to the nectar flow. Since here, in the Northern Hemisphere, there is no nectar flow during the winter months, queens take a well-deserved winter vacation from egg laying.

Who rules the bee hive?

It isn’t the queen bee. A bee hive is a complex, democratic society, run almost exclusively by the worker bees. They make collective decisions to ensure the survival of the colony.

Who gets to be queen?

Remember those pheromones? As a queen ages, her pheromones become weaker and this will signal the workers that a new queen is required.

Three gold-colored 'balls' the beginning of queen cells

Once this decision is collectively made, the worker bees choose five to ten freshly laid  fertilized eggs and move them to larger, newly built queen cells. This moving of eggs happens within three days of a egg being laid. A queen bee starts her life exactly like a worker bee, from a fertilized egg.

It is after the egg has hatched into a larva that things change. While the worker bee larva is fed a diet of bee bread (honey and pollen) the queen bee larva will continue on a steady, rich diet of royal jelly. This is a true case of ‘you are what you eat!’

This diet of royal jelly is what creates a queen bee. On the ninth day, the queen cells will be capped, just like a worker bee cell. But, unlike a worker who remains another 12 days in pupa stage, a queen bee only requires 7 or 8 days to finish developing and hatch from her cell.

There can be only one

Upon hatching, her responsibilities start immediately. The first task on her agenda is to track down and kill any and all new queens in the hive. The workers, having set this chain of events in motion, leave the new queen to the task at hand.

She will start by emitting a ‘piping’ sound. All the other new queens in the hive are conditioned to respond … even if they have not yet hatched.

The queen that hatches first will track down the other ‘piping’ queen cells, rips them open, and stings the occupant. As brutal as this sounds, nature is insuring the survival of one queen bee.

If two queens hatch, they will eventually meet, and a fight ensues. With stingers at the ready, and a fight to the death, there is always the chance they both might die. This would leave the hive without a queen bee at all, especially if the original queen is no longer in residence. That spells doom and the death of the colony is imminent.

 The new reigning queen bee

Our queen is given a few days to survey her new kingdom. Before she starts her formal reign as queen bee of a prosperous honey bee hive, she must take a single mating flight. This may be the only time she will leave the hive. This flight will take place toward the end of her first week of life. During a mating flight, she will fly 3000 or so feet in the air, and mate with 10 to 15 drones. She will (hopefully) return safely to her hive. She is now equipped to lay eggs for the rest of her life. This may be anywhere in the vicinity of 1,800,000 to 3,000,000 in her lifetime. That’s amazing!!!

As the only honey bee in the hive who can reproduce, this is her sole focus. It is left up to the myriad of worker bees to feed her, groom her, and look after all the eggs she lays.

An Italian (orange) queen surrounded by her workers

It is her responsibility alone to ensure there are enough workers in her hive to produce an adequate amount of honey to sustain the bees living within. She also sets the balance of worker bees to drones (approximately 60,000 workers to 500 drones.) 

Although the queen bee does not necessarily run the hive, she is definitely the heart of it. Without their queen the workers have no way to sustain the population. Without the worker bees to feed and groom her, the queen bee cannot survive.

A honey bee hive in perfect harmony, is an example of Mother Nature doing exactly what she does best.

Early spring honey bee hive

 The Drone Bee

Since those worker bees have pretty much cornered the market on work, there isn’t much left for the drone bee to do. With worker bees all being female, there is only one job left for the male drone.

Let’s go back and start at the beginning. Our drone bee starts his life as an unfertilized egg, laid by the queen bee. He too, receives royal jelly for the first three days of his larva life and then, like the worker bee, his diet will change and consist of bee bread until he is nine days old and a worker bee seals his cell. He proceeds through his pupa stage all by himself. Around the 24 day mark, he will start to chew his way out of the cell. Unlike his worker bee sisters, he likes to take his time, and can take hours to hatch.

The drone is a pretty cute bee. He can be considerably larger than the petite worker bee. His huge brown eyes meet at the top of his head, which is quite convenient for sky gazing. He generally lacks the bright yellow or orange stripes associated with honey bees.

Once hatched, his life of leisure begins.

A day in the life of a drone bee. 

Drone bee, centre right
Photo courtesy MortonMolyneux©2014

If the weather is nice, a jaunt outside is in order. Upon wandering out the door, oblivious to the many bustling worker bees that have been up since the crack of dawn, he takes a moment to stretch and groom himself. Then flies off to join his buddies. A pre-arranged drone hangout is his destination. He, along with drones from other hives, will meet and keep a constant eye on the sky for a queen bee on her mating flight.

This is the drone’s one and only job, to mate with an unmated queen. If he is lucky enough to catch a queen on her high speed mating flight, he dies soon after.

Queen honey bees only mate once in their lifetime, and generally live three to five years. In the wild, a honey bee hive may swarm once or twice a season, presenting at least a couple mating opportunities for drones. Now that most honey bee hives are kept by beekeepers who want to limit swarming, the incident of hive swarming is drastically reduced, and drones are left with very little to do.

If no queen presents, our drone will return to his hive. Upon entering the hive, he will find one of the nurse bees and insist on being fed. Since drones are necessary to ensure the survival of the species, a worker bee will interrupt her work and see that he is fed.

Drone bees indicated by arrows

It’s really not all his fault that he sometimes seems more a liability than an asset to the working of the hive. Being a bigger bee he isn’t able to retrieve honey from the cells like the nimble little worker bees. He is also not equipped with a stinger … so defending the hive is strictly out of the question.

As we all know … all good things must come to an end and in a drone’s life, it is no different.

As soon as night temperatures drop below freezing, the worker bees – in true female fashion – begin to worry. Their biggest concern is whether or not they have stored enough honey for the hive to make it through the tough, and sometimes long, Canadian winter. The workers also know, that no queens will be created over the winter, and hence, drones are no longer required. Drones consume a lot of honey and are now truly a liability to the winter survival of the hive.

Drones sense this change in atmosphere and begin to cluster together inside the hive. There is safety in numbers, at least for a brief time. The worker bees, with their incredible work ethic, methodically drag the drones out of the hive, one by one. The guard bees at the entrance don’t let the drones back in, and they are left to freeze outside.

Vorroa mite on drone's thorax

I was pleased to find an article that stated drones might actually play an even more important role in the honey bee hive than originally thought. The varroa mite (which can be a deadly threat to honey bees) prefers to attach itself to drone larva and drone adults. When drones are driven from the hive, a large percentage of the varroa mites go with them, giving the honey bee hive a natural defense against this serious pest.

Every spring, after the queen has ensured the hive has a suitable work force, she will begin to lay drone eggs. The drone population makes up only 10 percent or so of the total hive population.

We anticipate the arrival of the drones mid-spring, and mourn their demise in the fall. This is just another example of nature’s natural rhythm and balance at work.