Bee Education Field Trips

Honeybees are social insects and live together in hives which may contain thousands of bees. A honey bee hive is like a complex society. Each individual has a job and together the bees all contribute so that the hive thrives. Each hive at RIC contains 40-50,000 bees. Within the hives, each bee works as part of a team to keep the hive functioning. The biology of honey bees relates to their behavior. Honey bees are classified as either worker bees, drones, or queens.

Worker Bees

Worker bees are females and help keep the hive in production. There will be thousands of workers and they hold many jobs. Worker bees care for the young, developing bees called larvae, and the queen bee. Worker bees also build hexagonal cells for the eggs and larvae, supply the hive with nectar, keep the hive clean, as well as cool in summer and warm in winter. As worker bees explore outside the hive, they collect nectar and pollen, water, and plant sap called propolis. These materials will be used for food resources and to fix damages in the hive.

Drone Bees

Within each hive there will be only a few hundred males called drones. Drone bees have one job: to mate with a queen bee. Directly after mating the drone will die. While waiting to mate, the drones will live in the hives and be taken care of by the worker bees. Although drones are larger than the female workers, they must rely on them for protection because drones lack stingers.

Queen Bee

A hive will have a single queen bee who lays all the eggs in the hive. She is larger than the rest of the workers and drones and is selected as the queen by being fed a special food, called royal jelly, when she is a developing larva. Her job is to lay eggs, up to 1,500 per day, and go off to find drones to mate with. She will travel far outside the hive to reduce chances of mating with a drone from her own hive. This helps prevent poorly developed bees from being born and damaging the system. She will typically live for two years. After her death, a new queen is chosen. In hives, the queen will be marked with paint to keep track of her whereabouts.​​​

Bees use a process called chemical signaling to communicate to each other in the hive. They diffuse molecules into the air, called pheromones, and can understand their meaning. Bees also communicate through one another using behaviors such as a ‘waggle’ dance pattern to communicate the location of pollen. Besides using pollen to make their own honey for food, when bees fly from flower to flower they also have another important role in nature: pollination. As they land on each flower they will become covered in pollen, a yellow dust that helps germinate other plants.

Bees are designated to be pollinators and have pollen cling to their bodies and transferred onto other flowers they land on. Their legs have long hairs that pollen can stick to, as well as "pollen sacs" on their sides that collect large quantities of pollen and stay piled up on their sides.

Fruits and Vegetables That Bees Pollinate

• Broccoli, brussel sprouts, asparagus, cucumbers
• Pumpkins, summer squash, butternut squash
• Zucchini, tomatoes, apples, strawberries
• Blueberries, raspberries, watermelon, peaches 

Plants That Attract Bees

• Dandelions, milkweed, goldenrod, roses
• Black eyed susan, daisies, sunflowers
• Laurel, rhododendron, azalea, aster

Bee Populations are Declining World-Wide

Although honey bees have garnered much of the press, native bee populations and other pollinators such as butterflies are also declining. These species are vitally important within local ecosystems. Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) is a major cause of honey bee losses and occurs when adult bees flee the hive leaving the Queen and developing bee brood behind. Without worker bees, the hive is doomed. A number of factors likely contribute to CCD and the decline of bee populations in general. 

Pesticides

As an insect, honey bees are quite sensitive to most classes of insecticides. Even low doses of these compounds can adversely affect foraging honey bees and therefore the hive itself. Recently, a relatively new class of compounds called the neonicotinoids were banned in Europe due to their detrimental effects on bee populations.

Habitat Loss & Fragmentation

As open spaces (meadows, fields, and wetlands) are lost or fragmented due to human activities, bees must travel further to forage for pollen and nectar, therefore making it harder to sustain the hive. Successful foraging is particularly critical in the fall when bees need to build-up food stores to sustain the hive through the winter. It is now common for about 50% of all honey hives to be lost during the winter months.

Pathogens

Viruses, bacteria, fungi and even other insects can kill bees. The list of bee pathogens is long and growing as we learn more about bee biology. Some of these threats are relatively recent. For instance, Varroa mites (Varroa destructor) are native to Asia but in the 1940’s, were seen in honey bee hives in Africa and Europe. Since this time, Varroa mites have traveled nearly world-wide and are a major threat to bee populations. Even more recently, the Small Hive Beetle (SHB) began infesting honey bee hives in Europe and the Americas. The SHB first appeared in the US in the late 1990’s. This beetle is native to sub-Saharan Africa and thrives in warmer climates. However, SHBs have quickly adapted to colder US environments and can be seen in most states in the North East. Many of these bee pathogens move with bee populations. Because bees are so important for agriculture, bee hives are often transported to fertilize crops. Bees are also transported through the mail as a ‘packet’. The transport of bees facilitates the movement of bee pathogens. 

Honey Collection

A comb is removed from the hive carefully by a beekeeper. The comb is scraped with the heat knife to remove the whitish seal that the bees layered over the honey.

This will open the cells up to allow the honey to be taken out. A special machine, called an extractor, is used to pull the honey from each of the honey comb cells. Once it is released, the honey will be strained through a screen to be sifted and collect.

Using Honey

Honey is used in a variety of ways, but if you're looking for some recommended honey-based recipes RIC's Executive Chef, Dean Faiola, has a few favorites. 

Honey-Based Recipes to Try