My husband kept urging me to check it for swarm cells and I kept putting it off. I couldn’t get your e-mail address to work, so I’m putting the answers to your questions right here, front and center. It is not clear whether N. apis causes the same effect in honey bee learning and homing behavior. According to Jürgen Tautz in his book The Buzz About Bees, foragers enter a pronounced state of sleep—largely at night and in ... A strange honey bee behavior known as “washboarding” or “rocking” continues to elude an explanation, but it is fun to watch. The following posts relate to various honey bee behaviors. When food sources run low, such as during a summer nectar dearth, the workers in a honey bee hive will often expel both drones and drone pupae. All my hives are misted with bees, but my two nucs—stacked one above the other—really surprised me. Like some insects, honey bees behave defensively when … And believe it or not, some blast them away with the garden hose. This is the beauty of honey bee swarming. Because stingers contain barbs and are attached to the worker's intestines, they detach from the stinging bee's body after attacking a victim. The longer answer is that when you do something that threatens your bees, alarm pheromone is emitted into the air by the endangered bees as they attempt to sting you. The temperature is hovering around 55° F in the shade and my bees are out in droves. “Imagine that!” Workers make these nests from wax, which they secrete from their abdominal glands. Although I’ve seen many evicted drones, I’ve never seen a huddle of drones quite like this. Furthermore, he claimed they became more docile every time he opened the hive. Honey bees are very adaptable. You look up to see thousands of honey bees flying about madly. How long before a new beehive begins to forage? Your bees are busily backfilling empty brood comb with fall nectar, but you would like them to build more comb so they don’t completely choke the brood nest. I have compared drones to drunks, state workers, and my brother. However, honey bees are able to sting only once. So yes, I absolutely understand the ... Something about laying workers brings out the wizard in us. If it’s not what you’re looking for, the Index can help you find something more specific. This image by beekeeper Reed Beatse shows honey bees festooning below a comb from his top-bar hive. Your support matters. Floral fidelity yields pure pollen pellets, A great day for bees: down with honey bee dysentery, Usurpation: when one colony takes over another, Monday morning myth: honey bees hibernate. I wasn’t going to write about this until I figured it out, but I’m coming up blank. I went out to the bee yard Sunday morning at 0600 and those bees were still in the bearding position. I get a vicarious pleasure from watching the little workers take down their lazy male nest mates. Honey bees are generally active during spring, when they go in search of plants from which to collect pollen and nectar. Simple enough. Here in the northern hemisphere, your calendar may tell you it’s the first day of winter, but from the bee’s perspective, it’s actually the first day of spring. OMG. Frantically I tried searching online what to do. The post titled “Bad-ant ant advice and the ascension of bees” coaxed readers out of the woodwork. But the issue that causes all the disagreement among beekeepers is whether honey bees will actually drill a hole in a ... Florence, a beekeeper and blogger in eastern Ontario, sent some photos with a question: Why do her bees return to the same watering holes day after day, even when it is raining and closer-to-home sources abound? Although they may seem small and insignificant, pollinators are vital to anyone who eats. The eusocial sweat bee queen, on the other hand, readily chooses to bring up more female workers. . The class was about harmful algae blooms, but the first assignment was to find articles in the popular press and compare them to the scientific papers they were supposedly based on. The hive is a series of combs composed of two layers of six-sided cells made of wax produced and secreted by the workers.