Think about this. So it will take four bees' lives worth of work to make 1 teaspoon of honey. There are 48 teaspoons in a cup. That's 192 bees' working hard to gather one cup of honey.
In a colony of bees, there are three main individuals; the Queen, the workers, and the drones.
This lesson will start out with (what I know) about the Queen bee.
Often referred to as "Her Majesty", the Queen is paramount to the success of the colony. She can lay over 1000 eggs a day. She leaves the hive as a virgin queen once, is mated, returns to the hive, and may never leave again. Her job is to lay eggs. Period. She is groomed and fed by her nurse bees.
Imagine opening a hive and seeing all the bees in the colony. There can easily be over 30K bees buzzing and walking around. Your job, as a beekeeper, is to find your one, single queen. If you cannot, perhaps you can spy an egg or larvae. And as a beekeeper, you know your chances are slim of finding the queen and finding the tiny bee egg while looking through the black, screened veil is also very slim - you have the knowledge that in three days an egg will hatch into a larvae. Easily seen, this larvae means that at least three days ago you had a queen! Sometimes, that's the best you can do in your beekeeping.
I had a queen stop laying eggs this year. I pulled frames one weekend, saw her right away, but did not see larvae. Hoping all those cells were filled with eggs, when I checked the next weekend, there was no larvae. Uh oh......So, I paid $30 for a bug!! Bought a queen in Idaho Falls.
I think she quit laying eggs because I caught her and marked her. There is a color established by Bee People for queens for every year. This year, it is a lovely blue. You must catch the queen and get this blue dot on her thorax. She is very wiggly and does not like to be caught. She does not stay still. It is difficult to mark a queen. I may have injured her by doing so. No more queen marking. You might imagine, however, it is much much easier to spot your queen when she is walking around with a blue dot!
Queens kill each other. There can only be one in a hive. So, I removed the non-egg laying queen - happily found - and inserted the new queen. She is introduced into the hive inside a cage. The hole she was inserted into is filled with candy. The bees slowly eat away the candy while getting used to her new scent. By the time she crawls out, everyone should be good with each other and she gets to work.
The old queen is now soaking in a bottle with vodka. They say her pheromones will be useful when putting out swarm traps in the spring. I felt bad drowning her in vodka.
Last weekend, I made a quick check. The new queen had released. I did not find her, but it was lousy weather. Bees don't like lousy weather. They get snarly and sting more often. I like to work bees when they are content and happy. This was not that day. I removed the queen cage and put the hive back together.
What is the difference between a hive and a colony? The hive is where the colony lives. The hive is parts and pieces of wood, the colony is a mass of bees all living under the direction of one egg-laying Queen.
Her Majesty.
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