(Chelsea Update would like to thank Tom Hodgson and the Waterloo Natural History Association for the photos and the information in this column.)
Late June through the end of July is the time of year that both honey bees and beekeepers look forward to. This is when the best nectar plants are in bloom and the majority of honey is made. And, this summer is shaping up to be a great honey season as soil moisture is good and nectar plants are in excellent condition.
Each bee colony has been preparing for the honey flow since the middle of April. The queen has been laying eggs at the rate of about 2,000 per day to create the 60-80,000 worker bees needed to bring in the harvest.
The earlier blooms of apples, cherries, strawberries and blueberries were just a warm up for these voracious foragers. During the next four weeks, honey bees will literally work themselves to death, foraging from dawn to dusk until the life goes out of them. Although they will be visiting a variety of summer wildflowers, white sweet-clover and alfalfa will be the main nectar producers.
The nectar the bees bring back to the hive will be about 50-percent water. By the time it has ripened, the honey will be a super-saturated sugar solution containing only about 18-percent water. Most of the moisture will be lost through evaporation – thanks to the constant wing fanning of the bees inside the hive.
There are three casts of bees within every hive. One queen that spends most of her life laying eggs. That may seem to be her sole purpose, but the pheromones she produces also control the activities of all the other bees in the hive.
The workers are also females, but their egg laying capabilities are suppressed by the pheromones of the queen. They make up 98 percent of the bees in the hive and are responsible for all the work done for the colony except egg-laying.
If the queen is lost, the workers will be able to lay eggs, but since they have never mated, the workers are only able to produce drone (male) offspring. A drone’s sole purpose is to mate with the queen, which happens only once in her lifetime. They do no other work.
A look inside a bee hive during this time of year finds it bustling with activity. The queen is still laying eggs, the workers are building comb feeding larvae, and ripening honey. Workers just in from foraging in the fields, legs heavy with bright yellow pollen, will be doing elaborate dances to tell other bees where they found the flowers.
Normally these activities are hidden in the darkness of the hive. However, visitors to the Discovery Center can view this fascinating life of honey bees through the glass of an observation hive.
This summer, the center is open Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. and noon – 5 p.m. on Sunday.
