Inside the hive

I once mentioned that I was a beekeeper, that was in my first post; wood ant antics. I still am a beekeeper, and I have been one for a long time now. I first went beekeeping when I was 5 years old, but at that time I had no clue on what to do. So after multiple years of being taught by "the Poot" (my mums dad!) I "officially" became a beekeeper, with my own hive and hat! I was 12 or 13.

Photo taken by my Father. All rights reserved.

The hive is a bit like a townhouse, but for bees, as it has several floors. Below is a tour round the floors and their purposes.

My first ever day beekeeping!! Photo taken by my Father. All rights reserved

Inside the brood box (floor 1/2)

The brood box is the place where the queen bee lives, and the bottom one (sometimes two) sections of the hive; two floors if its a busy/big hive. The queen bee will lay her eggs in the brood box, to replace the older worker bees. The brood box is meant for the larvae and the eggs, but I find that my bees use it for honey sometimes... my bees are pretty bad bees!!

The queen excluder (between floor 2/3)

The queen excluder is literally just a board with thick wire strung across it, and the wire is placed less than the width of your pinky finger apart; the perfect distance apart because the queen bee and drones cant fit through, but workers can. (More on the queen, workers and drones later!!) The queen excluder is used to stop the queen bee from getting into the supers and laying, some beekeepers don't use them and let her lay in the supers, but I personally don't see why you would let that happen, as it would make the honey extraction process so much more difficult. (So I use them!)

The supers (floor 3 and up)

These floors are only used for storing honey, really. Once a super is full of honey, you use a clearer board and leave it there overnight. The clearer board acts a bit like a valve, bees can go out, but they can't get in again. So overnight bees generally head down to the brood boxes. The only thing above the supers is the lid, plus bricks on top of that, to stop the hive from toppling over in the wind; when it has all its supers on, it can be pretty tall...! Bees make their own type of glue called propolis, and, in all honesty I don't know of something that is as sticky or staining as propolis. My beekeeping gloves are forever stained by years of propolis, lol. You cant really avoid it either; the bees stick the supers together with it, and it just gets everywhere.

Photo taken by "H". All rights reserved.

The frames and all I have to say about them

The frames are a bit like a picture frame, except at the top the wood sticks out in a chamfered end, acting as handles but also to hold the frame in the super. Every winter, we make more frames for the next year, even though you may not need them. I find you often do. In the spring, when it's warmer, you fill the frames with foundation, which is a bit like a sheet of paper that is printed with a 3D honeycomb pattern. Except, its not made of paper, but rather bees wax! You have to load the foundation when its warmer because it's so thin, it gets brittle and easily snaps in the cold.

Photo taken by my faithful mother. All rights reseved.

The bees will draw out the pattern into hexagonal cells, to make hollow "storage boxes" for their honey, creating the honeycomb for which bees are best known. The problem with foundation, is that all of the cells are the same size, and bees need some different sized cells to grow some larvae in. So, you can also get foundation free frames; these are the same frame, but instead of loading the foundation, you load 2 wooden posts (I use wooden barbeque skewers). The bees will make the honeycomb themselves, and to their own size, which is useful in the brood box, where the bees can expand the cells (the honeycomb shape) to fit drone larvae inside. Queen larvae and worker larvae fit in the standard cells size, except queens stick out rather a lot!

Now that I have explained the hive, I will tell you all about its residents.

The queen bee

The queen bee is essential to the hive's success. Without her, there would be no bees to replace the ones that go. The queen bee looks different from all the workers; she's much longer than the others, and sometimes doesn't have stripes, or at least my current queen doesn't.

The queen bee thinks she is the boss - she is after all, mum to all of the worker bees, but in reality the workers are. When a queen bee lays a female egg in a cell, it's the workers who decide whether it will become a queen or a worker bee. They determine this by what they feed the larvae, and how big they make the cell. A new queen bee will eventually emerge as a virgin queen and go on her maiden flight, where she will be mated by lots of drones (who die (pop!) in the process!). She will then return to the hive, and lay eggs for the rest of her life - unless she gets superseded; which is basically being murdered by her workers as she's not being an effective queen (laying enough). When a queen bee gets old, she will begin to lay only drones, and is another reason for being superseded. If this is the case, they will turn another worker cell (or several) into new queens and the process will start all over again.

The workers

As well as being the collective hive Chief Executive Officers, they undertake many other important jobs. There is a hierarchy to these jobs, with the younger worker bees having to complete the mundane housework jobs before being promoted to the offsite, fun but risky foraging jobs! Their jobs include the following:

• Heaters! In winter they snuggle together and vibrate their flight muscles to keep the hive warm

• Coolers! In summer they act as air conditioning units by fanning their wings to cool the hive down. The drones also get in on this game!

• Shoppers (forager)! They visit as many flowers as they can, collecting pollen and nectar. They put their pollen in their pollen sacs (the bee equivalent of a bag for life!), and the nectar they drink and store in a special organ called a honey stomach (a bit like a pudding stomach!). Some foragers also have to collect water, which is a pretty risky job reserved for experienced bees - Poot leaves out shallow trays of water, full of pebbles and sticks to help them gather water without drowning.

• Cooks! Once they return, the pollen is mixed with nectar to make 'bee bread' which is used to feed the larvae. The nectar is passed from bee to bee to dehydrate it, and mixed with bee enzymes, and then stored in the cells as honey. Once the cell is full, they cap it over.

• Builders! Bees have a special gland which makes bees wax, which they use to make honeycomb, lids for their honey jars, and propolis.

• Cleaners / Undertakers! Bees like to keep their hive clean, so it doesn't get disease. Bees seem to like to die in the hive, rather than outside - but this creates a mess for the bees. So worker bees grab the dead bees and fly off with them, ceremonially dumping them away from the hive.

• Soldiers! Bees also have to defend their hive from invasions; wasps are their common bad bug! When a wasp comes in to steal the honey, many worker bees will weigh down the wasp and sting it to death. Take that, wasp! Other critters that like to invade include hornets and mice. These bad boys are the job of the beekeeper to protect the hive by putting on a special door to keep them out.

As you can see, the workers are just as important as the queen bee; without them there would be quite simply no functioning hive.

The drones

The drones are the boys. They, like many males, are greedy, but once again, without them, the hive wouldn't work. Their purpose is to make sure that the queen is fertilized, so she can lay with success. They do, however, help with cooling the hive, but not with heating, because drones do not survive past autumn.

Photo taken by "H". All rights reserved

Swarming, the maybe most annoying thing about beekeeping

Swarming is what happens when the hive gets too big for the space it's been given. In order to swarm, the bees will produce new queen bee cells. Half of the hive will stay with the new queen(s), and the other half will leave to look for a new home with the old queen.

They will initially form a cluster, like on a branch, with the queen bee in the center to keep her safe (the bees are crazy for her pheromones, or scent). They will send out scout bees to look for an appropriate new home. Once one has been found, the scout bees will try and convince the cluster that their potential home is the best. Eventually the cluster will be convinced and move off to the new home. It sounds like all is lost once they've swarmed, but it isn't. To prevent swarming in the first place, you can place bait hives out, which are empty hives, except for a few frames. These bait hives will hopefully lure the swarm to move into there and voila, you have another hive of bees. But if you notice the swarm, you can grab them in a container, and move them into a bait hive. To make sure that the bees don't just run (or fly!) away from the bait hive straight away, get a frame of brood from another hive, and shake the bees off. Then replace one of the empty frames in the bait hive with the one of brood, and those bees won't leave as they won't abandon the brood.

As you can see, the life of a beekeeping is a fascinating, mad, but good one! I completely love beekeeping, and I am very grateful to The Poot, who got me into it and has given me his time and expert advice over the years. ♥

Photo taken by my faithful mother. All rights reserved.