Honey Bees and One Queen Wanted

We have a wonderful beehive/apiary in our library that is a source of amusement and interest for the staff and for visitors. Life in the beehive is fascinating. There is so much going on from Spring to Fall that we can literally spend an hour talking about honey bees with school children. For example, kids are amazed to find out that most of the bees in the hive (40,000-60,000/hive) are workers and the workers are all females. The workers have critical jobs such as scouts, guards, nurses, cleaners-and of course, the one all-important queen. The drones, which are the only males, have one main job- to mate with a queen, therefore in tough times, where food is scarce, the males aren't fed and don't survive. This time of year, workers are making honey and feeding the larvae that hatch out of the eggs the queen has laid.

We have a beekeeper who is a pretty great guy that donates his time and talent and money to keep the hive going. He shows up at all hours and makes sure our bees are happy and healthy and if they aren't, he fixes it. He recently added some more bees and they made a queen, but now she seems to have disappeared....The beekeeper thought maybe, hopefully, she is out mating with drones? But I am not sure how long that takes because she's been gone a few days. Without a queen, the hive has no chance of surviving in the long run. She is the only one that lays eggs, lots of eggs- up to 1500/day in the busy season. Bees live only 4-6 weeks during this time of year so no queen to make new bees is the kiss of death for a hive. Obviously our hive needs a new queen if the old queen is gone for good. The workers can turn a cell with a regular larva in it into a queen cell by making it bigger and feeding the larva inside a substance called Royal Jelly- voila, a new queen emerges! Royal Jelly is a substance that only bees make, in fact, humans have tried to duplicate royal jelly, but to no avail.

Honey bees are essential to human survival. Yes, I did say that, essential. Not only do they produce over $100 million worth of honey and beeswax each year in the United States, they are the main pollinators of agricultural crops that we rely on for food (which consequently adds another $10 billion to their overall value). Another "lowly" animal that we rely on for the lives we lead as fellow animals on this planet.

If you are interested in learning more about bees and beekeeping, come to Tanglewood on June 13th from 2:30-4:00 for a free program led by John Slechta, our beekeeper. He'll have much more information, pictures and some of his beekeeping equipment to share with you.