Friday, May 12, 2006
Beekeeping 101
Sorry its been a while, but as mentioned in last post, I wanted to keep it bee-free until I started the course.
Last thursday evening, I went my the first session at the local college. It was good. I learnt a lot of stuff and even managed to don a veil and check out the hives. I was pretty scared 'cos I was wearing shorts, but I didn't get stung once!
So, here is what I'm learning:
The basics:
Bees are social insects that make honey. There are lots of breeds of bees, but we use honey-bees as they overproduce honey, so we, as beekeepers, can take the excess.
There are 3 types of bee in a single hive.
Queen
Drones
Workers
Here are some pictures of each type: Queen, Drone, Worker (top to bottom)
The workers are what you will see lots and lots and lots of. They make the honey and essentially do all the work (as the name suggests). They are all female, but can't lay eggs.
The drones are the males of the hive. Other than mating with Queens from other hives (no inbreeding here, thanks!), I'm not sure what these chaps do.
The Queen is the really special one. She is bigger than the workers and lays all the eggs. She lays eggs in wax cells (the honeycomb holes you can see in the picture of bees on this blog) which the workers have previously built. Once she has laid an egg in a cell, the workers tend to it, making sure it hatches, feed the hatched grub (looks like a fat maggot), then seal the cell in which the maggot lives when it is ready to turn into an adult bee.
The bees live off the honey they produce from the nectar and pollen they collect. The honey is also used to feed the grubs before they grow into adult bees.
Last thursday evening, I went my the first session at the local college. It was good. I learnt a lot of stuff and even managed to don a veil and check out the hives. I was pretty scared 'cos I was wearing shorts, but I didn't get stung once!
So, here is what I'm learning:
The basics:
Bees are social insects that make honey. There are lots of breeds of bees, but we use honey-bees as they overproduce honey, so we, as beekeepers, can take the excess.
There are 3 types of bee in a single hive.
Queen
Drones
Workers
Here are some pictures of each type: Queen, Drone, Worker (top to bottom)
The workers are what you will see lots and lots and lots of. They make the honey and essentially do all the work (as the name suggests). They are all female, but can't lay eggs.
The drones are the males of the hive. Other than mating with Queens from other hives (no inbreeding here, thanks!), I'm not sure what these chaps do.
The Queen is the really special one. She is bigger than the workers and lays all the eggs. She lays eggs in wax cells (the honeycomb holes you can see in the picture of bees on this blog) which the workers have previously built. Once she has laid an egg in a cell, the workers tend to it, making sure it hatches, feed the hatched grub (looks like a fat maggot), then seal the cell in which the maggot lives when it is ready to turn into an adult bee.
The bees live off the honey they produce from the nectar and pollen they collect. The honey is also used to feed the grubs before they grow into adult bees.
