Honey Bees

Did you know?

• There are three types of bee in a hive:
  • Queen Bee who is the boss and only she can lay eggs.  The queen is a longer but slightly thinner bee.
  • Worker Bee is female and does many different jobs:  looking for food, feeding the grubs that will grow into new bees, cleaning and guarding the hive and making the comb.  There are 9 or 10 worker bees for every drone bee
  • Drone Bee is male, is shorter and wider than the queen bee.  The drone mate with the virgin queen bee
• Bees collect pollen and nectar from flowers, for their food.
• The tiny 6 sided cells which make up the comb are used as cradles for young and undeveloped bees as well as for storing honey.

 Honeybees live inside the hive through winter but do not hibernate. The workers form a cluster about the size and shape of a rugby ball around the queen. They huddle together and shiver to keep each other warm. As the weather gets colder the queen lays fewer eggs and may stop laying altogether, so the workers have little or no brood to care for.

When the weather starts to get warmer in early spring the queen will lay eggs again and the colony will develop and grow in numbers. On warm and dry days the bees will fly away from the hive on ‘cleansing flights’ (to poo) or to forage if there are suitable plants nearby.

 The colony (hive) will continue to increase in numbers from 10,000 bees to around 50,000 bees in the summer. The hive should be at its fullest around July when there is a plentiful supply of nectar from plants and the bees should have an abundance of crops to forage.

As we come into autumn, the queen will gradually reduce the number of eggs that she lays and the colony’s population will decline. Eggs that are laid in autumn develop into winter bees who have a life cycle of about five to six months. Summer bees may only live for about six weeks, because workers eventually work themselves to death by collecting food and water for the hive. The queen has a much longer life cycle and may live between three to five years.

We strongly advise you to watch – The lifecycle of the Bee  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQpolPycuxQ

Click to view Looking At A Bee worksheet

Suggested activities can be found at https://www.bbka.org.uk/learning-activities