Beekeeping Day 1

1. Honey Bees
a. Honey bees insects (arthropods & animals)
b. Insects
i. Bees
ii. Wasps
iii. Ants
1. Hymenoptera
iv. Termites
1. Isoptera
2. Comparisons in Social Hymenoptera
a. Hair Types
i. Wasps few, non-branched or simple hairs (Looks
like a I)
ii. Bees Many branches or plumose hairs (Looks
like a Y)
b. Diet
i. Wasps Meat eaters (omnivores)
ii. Bees Pollen & Nectar (vegetarian/vegan)
c. Nests
i. Wasps Vegetation or ground (exposed or in
vegetation)
ii. Bees Hollows or ground (nest in cavity)
1. Ground Nests are bees or wasps, but not
honeybees
d. Substrate (What is the nest made out of)
i. Wasps Paper
ii. Bees Synthesize wax
e. Shape
i. Wasps Angular body with long appendages
ii. Bees Hairy, waist not always evident
f. General Description
i. Wasps stealthy (sport cars)
ii. Bees Utilitarian (mini vans)
3. Paper Wasps
a. Nests under the eaves of houses or rock facings
b. Annual nests (like most wasps and bees)
c. Population of a few dozen by the end of the summer
4. Cicada Killers
a. Solitary wasps but communal nesting
b. Adult wasps catch and sting adult cicadas to feed their
larvae during development
c. Can be yard pests, but are harmless to humans
d. Once they find suitable habitat, they can come back year
after year

5. European (or Japanese) Hornets

a. An introduced species
b. Looks like a big yellow jacket
c. Usually cavity nesting which is rare for hornets
d. Up to 1000 individuals by the end of the season
6. Bold-faces Hornets
a. More similar to yellow jackets than to true hornets
b. Tree nesting (think Winnie the Pooh)
c. 100-4000 hornets by the end of the summer
7. Yellow Jackets
a. Most often mistaken for honey bees
b. Ground-dwelling nests
c. Some annual, some perennial
d. Thousands of individuals and quite defensive
8. Carpenter Bees
a. Solitary Foundress females bore holes in wood to make
multiple nursery chambers
b. Larger males hover and protect suitable nesting material
c. Mostly active in the spring.
9. Other Solitary Bees
a. Halictids (sweat bees)
b. Andrenids (many look like honey bees, most are solitary
and soil nesting)
c. Meachilids (ex, leaf-cutting bees, alfalfa bees)
10.
Bumble Bees
a. Colonies are annual and are started by a foundress queen
in the spring
b. Like to nest in the ground, particularly in old mouse nests
c. 200 + bees by the end of the summer
11.
Sting
a. Offense
b. Defensive
i. Venom destroys cell membranes and causes pain
12.
The Schmidt Sting Pain Index (1-5)
a. Sweat bees (1)
b. Fire ant
c. Bold-faced hornet
d. Yellow Jacket (2)
e. Honey Bees
f. Paper Wasp (3)
g. Bullet Ant (5)
13.
6
Beekeeping Day 2
1. Who Comprises a honey bee colony

2.
3.

4.

5.
6.

a. 3 distinct types of bees in a honey bee colony

i. Worker
ii. Drone
iii. Queen
b. Workers
i. Typical honey bee
ii. Sterile females
iii. Majority of the colony (tens of thousands)
iv. Perform all colony labor
c. Drones
i. Honey Bee males
ii. A few hundred at any given time
iii. Mate with queens from foreign hives
d. Queen
i. Reproductive female
ii. One queen per colony
iii. Egg-laying machine
From the outside
a. Feral nests are typically built in enclosed cavities with
small entrances
From the inside
a. They build their nests
b. Combs are constructed from wax secreted by the workers
c. Hexagonal cells are the basic structural unit, which
provides the greatest strength, uses the least building
material, and provides the most stores in the same amount
of space.
Wax comb store their food
a. Pollen is also where they store their food
b. Brood (developing young)
c. Colonies build multiple parallel combs, separated by 3/8 of
an inch known as the bee space
d. The brood is located in the center of the nest, surrounded
by pollen, then by honey, forming three concentric
hemispheres
The Organization of the wax comb
Devlopment
a. Gender
i. Queen female
ii. Worker female
iii. Drone male
b. Fertilized
i. Queen yes
ii. Worker yes
iii. Drone No
c. Ploidy

i. Queen 2n (diploid)
ii. Worker 2n
iii. Drone n (haploid)
d. Egg
i. Queen 3 days
ii. Worker 3 days
iii. Drone 3 days
e. Larva
i. Queen 5.5 days
ii. Worker 6 days
iii. Drone 6.5 days
f. Pupa
i. Queen 7 days
ii. Worker 12 days
iii. Drone 14.5 days
g. Total
i. Queen 16 days
ii. Worker 21 days
iii. Drone 26 days
7. Capped of sealed brood pupil phase (protected and sealed)
8. Adult cut their ceiling off so they emerge as an adult
9. Basic Anatomy
a. Head feeding and sensory input
b. Thorax Structures for movement
c. Abdomen Main internal organs for digestive and
reproduction
10.
The Production
a. Seasonal Life Cycle
i. Both the brood and adult populations of a colony
changes over the course of the year
ii. Summer
1. Population stabilities
2. Maintain brood rearing
3. Keep the colony cool
iii. Autumn
1. Population declines
2. Limited brood rearing
3. Honey storage
4. Drones evicted
iv. Winter
1. Population clusters
2. Honey consumption
3. No brood reaing
4. Keep colony warm
v. Spring

Beekeeping Day 3
1. Spring
a. Population explosion
b. Exponential brood
2. Swarming
3. Queen Production
a. Workers raise daughter queens
b. Brood care nursing bees
Beekeeping Day 5
1. Stinging behavior
a. Older higher chance to sting
b. Stinger gets stuck into the body of the victim
c. Apparatus gets ripped out
2. What do you do when youre stung?
a. Try not to flinch, honey bees are sensitive to movement
b. Locate the sting and remove it quickly
c. Scrape the sting, dont pinch
d. Wash the area with soap and water
e. Monitor yourself for any systemic reaction
f. Take an antihistamine to reduce swelling
3. Wrap-up
a. Worker bees change tasks as they age
b. Young workers perform brood care and are called nurse
bees
c. Middle-aged workers perform various in-hive duties
d. Older workers fly from the hive and forage for food,
propolis (bee glue), or water
e. If you get stung, remove stinger quickly
4. How to see, smell and feels like a bee
a. Vision
i. Human vision
1. Cornea, lens, retina
ii. Light passes through the cornea and is inverted by
the concave lens
iii. The image appears upside down on the retina
b. 3 simple eyes (ocelli) on the tops of their heads (light
intensity)
c. 2 large compound eyes (sight)
d. bees have shorter wavelengths
i. cannot see colors (red)
e. bees CAN see ultraviolet and we cannot
f. each compound eye has about 5,000-6,000 individual
facets called ommatidia
g. each is at a fixed angle and cannot move or foveate (focus)
h. bees cant focus, but tey can detect movement very well

5. bees smell CO2 /sweat/floral

odors/perfumes/colognes/hairspray/pheromones
6. alarm pheromone colony defense
7. nasanov pheromone homing beacon
8. brood pheromone queen laying quality pollen foraging
9. queen pheromone mating, retinue, swarm attractant, social
cohesion
a. important during swarming
Beekeeping Day 6
- bees can smell better than most
- fluid in the mind
- humand use stretch receptors on our skin to feel texture
- bee sense just have exoskeleton
- they feel things with sensitive microscopic hairs that move
when touched.
- Bees have 5 eyes
- Failrly poor eyesight
- Different sense of gravity than humans
- Foraging area
o 6.5 km so that the entire foraging area is about 12,00
hectares
- floral constancy foragers tend to remain attached to a
particular flower on subsequent trips and days as long as the
resource remains attractive
o foragers are more consistent where there are large
areas of similar flowers and when there is ample forage
available
- nectar a sweet secretion of flowers (from nextaries) of
various plants (angiosperms); some secrete enough to provide
exess for the bees to store as honey
o usually secreted phloem (sugary sap)
o most often contains sucros (table sugar), but also
glucose (blood sugar) or fructose (fruit sugar)
- extra-floral nectaries
o located outside of the flower
- nextar transport
o through the bee
- queen regutitates the sugar
- bees flap wings to dry the nectar and make the honey
- Pollen
o Male reproductive cells of flowers collected and used by
bees for rearing their young. It is the protein part of the
diet
- Pollen foragers go into a hive, they kick off the pollen loads
directly into the cells

Nectar foragers do not directly put it in the cells

Middle aged bee gets raw pollen and put it into bee bread
o ADD ENZYMES AND PACK IT WITH HER HEAD
o For consumption of larvae
- Cross section of bee bread
- Propolis
o A glue or resin collected from trees or plants by the
bees; used to close holes and cover surfaces in the hive
(also called bee glue)
o Propolis is used by the bees much like humans use caulk
to seal cracks
o Propolis keeps the hove water tight and reduces disease
because it has anti-microbial properties
- Water very dilute nectar, or fluid containing little or no
sugar
o Use it sfor
o 1. Thin the honey down, 2. Drink. 3. Evaporative cooling
Beekeeping Day 7
1. Water
a. Very dilute, or fluid containing little or no sugar
2. Evaporative cooling bees
a. Huddling together and shivering
b. Keeps it constant
3. Wax
a. A complex mixture of lipids (fats) and hydrocarbons;
secreted by workers and used as the hive substrate
4. Wax builders engorge themselves with honey and produce wax
scales after about 24 hours
5. 9 grams honey = 1 gram of wax
a. stay in a chain and make wax
6. wax comb serves as the storage area for frood pollen, and honey
7. initially white in color but turns darker over time
8. absorbs a wide variety of hydrocarbon compounds
9. produces a unique odor that bees absorb on the surfaces of their
bodies, and is used for netimate recognition
10.
Bees forage over a very large area
11.
Bees collect nectar (carbohydrate source) and pollen
(protein source) from flowers and transport it back to the colony
12.
Some foragers also collect propolis (to seal hive cracks)
and water (to cool the hive)
13.
Bees make honey and wax from nectar
14.
Deciphering the language of the bees: communication
through dancing
15.
Animal Communication
a. Sound/vocal communication

b. Visual/color
c. Olfactory/taste
16.
Foraging and recruitment
a. Round dance
b. Waggle dance waggle in the middle, still around the
circles
17.
Karl Von Frisch
a. Austrian-born German scientist who is credited with
describing forager recruitment through dancing.
18.
Training foragers from observation hives
19.
Marking bees paint/plastic number tags
20.
step experiments therefore, distance information is
conveyed
21.
the duration for the waggle run, the straight section of
the figure eight, correlates with distance to food source
22.
the angle of the waggle run, with respect to vertical,
correlates with relative direction to food source
23.
waggle is relative to the sun
24.
Bees know the position of the sun by using polarized light
a. 1 degrees 180 degrees clear
b. 90 degrees 270 degrees dark
25.
Working Problem 1
a. Sun is in the south
b. Flowers are:
i. 25 meters away
ii. to the northeast
[ it is very close, less than a 100 meters away Round Dance]
26.

Working Problem 2
a. Sun is the south
b. Flowers are:
i. 700 meters away
ii. to the south
[ the waggle dance is facing up]
27.

Working Problem 3
a. Sun is in the south
b. Flowers are:
i. 600 meters away
ii. to the north
[Waggle dance moves down]
28.

Working Problem 4
a. Sun is in the east
b. Flowers are:
i. 225 meters away

ii. to the south

[right on the comb]
29.

Working Problem 5
a. Sun is the north
b. Flower are:
i. 225 meters away
ii. what direction? [northwest]
LECTURE 9/11
- Swarms temporarily cluster on nearby vegetation
- Foraging bees scout bees
- Scout bees on the swarm cluster fly out and locate potential
new nest sites
- Once they find a good cavity, they return and advertise the
new sites using the dance language
- Once they reach a consensus, they leave
- Quality of nest sight depends on how excited the scout bee is
when it returns recruits more bees based off the
advertisement they agree which one is best Queen
doesnt have to go first
- Scouts very rarely visit and compare multiple potential nest
sites
- They return to the cluster and dance more vigorously to better
sites
- 360 compass direction
- Thickness of arrow is how many bees advertised the area
- Clock different times of day
- Shake a package of bees with a caged queen
- Place on a wood board to make it two-dimensional
Lecture 9/29
Drones reproductive parts are folded up inside him.
o Turns himself inside out
Endophallus male reproductive
mating sign yellow sticking out of butt lodged
endophallus stuck into the body
clear = unmated (no sperm) spermatheca form a virgin queen
white = partially mated (2-3 milion sperm)
marbled = fully mated (5-7 million sperm) spermatheca from a
mated queen
artificial insemination of queen bees
drone eversion evert the drone, collect semen and inject it into
the queen
queens are highly polyandrous (mate with many drones)

drone congregation areas when queens are about a week old,

they store their sperm
spermathecae fertilize eggs for their entire lifetime
genetic diversity good for colony health

<18.6% sugar
between light and dark honey = amber
Meed honey wine
Sucrose (glucose) alcohol +carbon dioxide
Procedure
o Sanitize the equipment
o Mix honey and water (known as the must)
o Pitch yeast
o Oxygenate the must and put it into fermenter
o Take specific gravity reading with hydrometer
o Seal fermenter and put on air lock
o Let yeast undergo the fermentation process (several
weeks)
o Racking transfer from fermenter
o Let clear and finish fermenting (a couple of weeks)
o Bottling siphon into bottles
Harvesting and melting
o Top three uses
Cosmetic industry
candles
wax foundation for beekeepers
solar wax melter
pollen trap
o uses
health supplement
protein source
allergy relief
Harvesting propolis
o Uses
Health products (antimicrobial)
Cancer treatment
Wood varnish
Grafting tool small needle that picks up worker larvae