I Want to be a Queen Bee

I had a great experience at work the other day! Because my company deals with crop science we do whatever we can to support the bees!

We need bees to pollinate our food supply - they are very important! We actually have hive boxes on site and I got to go for a field visit along with some other employees!

We got to the bee room and our host began to explain all kinds of interesting things regarding bees! I knew nothing and it was all so very interesting!

1. Bees fly 55,000 miles to bring us 1 pound of honey
2. During her life (approximately 40 days) a honey bee will gather about 1/12 teaspoon of honey
3. Bees must go to two million flowers to gather l pound of honey
4. The bees gather 10 pounds of nectar to make 1 pound of honey
5. A honey bee can fly as fast as 15 miles per hour
6. It takes one ounce of honey to fuel a bee's flight around the world
7. A honey bee visits 50 to 100 flowers during a collection trip
8. Worker bees are all female
9. Flowers have bright markings and strong smells to attract bees and other insects so that they will pollinate flowers. Some also have dark lines called 'honey guides' which scientists believe help insects find their way into the flowers
10. A colony of bees consists of tens of thousands of worker bees, one queen and sometimes drones (male bees)
11. The honey bee is the only insect that produces food eaten by man
12. Honey has always been highly regarded as a medicine. It is thought to help everything from sore throats and digestive disorders to skin problems and hay fever
13. Honey has antiseptic properties and historically was often used as a dressing for wounds and a first aid treatment for burns and cuts
14. Honey lasts for ever - or nearly. An explorer who found a 2000 year old jar of honey in an Egyptian tomb said it tasted delicious! 
15. The natural fruit sugars in honey - fructose and glucose - are very quickly digested by the body. This is why sportsmen and athletes use honey to give them a natural energy boost
16. The Romans used honey instead of gold to pay their taxes
17. Honey bees have been producing honey in the same way for 150 million years
18. The bees' buzz is the sound made by their wings which beat 11,400 times per minute
19. The term 'beeline' comes from the 'bee line' these clever insects make to the flower of their choice, using the shortest route possible
20. When a bee finds a good source of nectar it flies back to the hive and shows its friends where the nectar source is by doing a sort of dance positioning the flower in relation to the sun and the hive. This is known as the "waggle dance"
    
    

Then we all got suited up, mixed up some sugar water and headed off to the hives. This is me in my suit...

And here we all are out in the field...

We mixed up the sugar water to feed to the bees. We just got new bees a few months ago and the team supplements their food by adding a tray of sugar water. We placed the sugar syrup in a 'frame or division board feeder'. This is a container, the size of a full-depth Langstroth frame, that has an open top and which sits in the super as a normal frame does. In the picture below, the very top section is the sugar water section.

 It was really amazing to see the inside of a hive and look for the queen bee! The bees either fill the cells with brood (babies), or honey. When a rack is full of honey and capped, it can be taken and spun to remove the honey! This is what the capped honey looks like!

Here is some capped and some not capped yet...

Here is a picture of a queen bee on the hive comb (she has the yellow dot on her back - this is not from our hives) she is the largest, lives the longest and her only purpose is to constantly lay eggs while others groom her and feed her! What a life!!!!

When we were all done we went back inside and we all got a pen and some honey sticks! It was an awesome experience!

If you ever get the chance, you should definitely take a tour of an apiary! It was the coolest thing to see!

Oh, and since I do not do anything halfway...I really want to be a bee keeper now!