Honey Bees

INDUSTRY
There are 115,000-125,000 beekeepers in the United States. Most are hobbyists with less than 25 hives. Commercial beekeepers are those with 300 or more hives.

In Louisiana, there are an estimated 343 beekeepers and 24,844 bee colonies.

The common honey bee of today is not native to America. Bees were brought here by European colonists in 1622. Escaped colonies quickly spread across the region. The bees did not cross the Rocky Mountains naturally; they were transported to Utah in the late 1840s by Mormon pioneers.

TYPES OF BEES
More than 25,000 species of bees have been identified around the world. In the continental United States, there are approximately 3,500 species of bees.

The bees commonly known as honey bees are represented by 10 species in the genus Apis. Apis mellifera, which means honey carrier, is the species of honey bee commonly found today in the Americas. Each species of honey bee has different physical and behavioral characteristics such as body color, wing length and susceptibility to disease.

Honey bees live in colonies and are social insects. A colony can have 20,000-100,000 bees, which depend on one another for survival.

Three types of adult bees make up a honey bee colony.

Types of Honey Bees / Photo credit Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Worker Bees: Approximately 99% of adult honey bees are sterile female worker bees.

Worker bees are developed from fertilized eggs and are fed royal jelly for three days. For the remainder of their larval stage, they are fed beebread. Worker bees' complete metamorphosis takes 21 days. Then, they will live only 6-8 weeks.

Queen Bee: The mother of the colony is the queen bee. There is only one queen in each colony.

Queen bees develop from fertilized eggs in the largest cells in the hive. A larva destined to become a queen bee is fed royal jelly for its entire larval stage. It only takes 16 days for a queen bee to develop.

The queen's primary job is to lay up to 3,000 eggs per day. She also produces pheromones, chemicals that tell other bees in the hive she is working and inhibit the development of other queens.

The queen is fed and cared for by worker bees and only leaves the hive to mate. After mating, she maintains the sperm collected in a special pouch in her body and can continue laying eggs for up to 2 years.

Drones: Male members of the colony are called drones.

Drones develop from unfertilized eggs laid in larger cells and are fed the same way as the worker bees. Their complete metamorphosis takes 24 days. Drones have wider bodies than workers, rounded abdomens and no stingers.

Drones exist solely to mate with the queen.

HONEY BEE HIVES
Honey bee hives can be natural or man-made. Wild honey bees usually build their hives in hollow trees or other sheltered places. Beekeepers provide wooden homes for bees.

The worker bees secrete wax from their bodies. They chew this wax and use it to build large sheets called wax combs. Each comb consists of six-sided wax structures called cells. Thousands of cells make up each comb; they are used for storing honey and pollen, and as nurseries for developing bees.

Bees make honey from nectar, a sweet liquid found inside flower blossoms. Worker bees collect nectar and carry it to their colony in pouches within their bodies. The secret ingredient that turns nectar into honey is bee spit. Chemicals in bees’ saliva help change nectar into sugars. This nectar/saliva mixture is stored in the beeswax comb.

THE IMPORTANCE OF POLLINATORS
Honey bees are superb pollinators and very important to agriculture.

For many plants, the production of seeds that will grow depends on pollination, the transfer of pollen from one flower to another. Most pollination occurs when insects and other creatures brush against the pollen-bearing part of a flower and pick up pollen. When the bee goes to another flower, some of the pollen from the first flower sticks to the second flower.

Pollination must occur for flowering plants to reproduce. Insects are responsible for the majority of pollination. About one-third of the human diet is derived directly or indirectly from insect-pollinated plants, about 80% of which is pollinated by honey bees.

It is estimated that honey bees annually pollinate more than $14 billion worth of seeds and crops. Beekeepers truck tens of billions of bees around the country every year, moving from field to field.

If all honey bees disappeared, it is estimated that about one-third of the foods we eat today would disappear as well. Almond crops are entirely dependent on honey bee pollination. Apples, avocados, blueberries, cherries, cranberries and sunflowers are 90% dependent on honey bee pollination.

HONEY PRODUCTION
Honey gets its start as flower nectar, which is collected by bees, naturally broken down into simple sugars and stored in honeycombs. The color and flavor of honey varies from hive to hive based upon the type of flower nectar collected by the bees.

Honey is pure, natural and never spoils. It is primarily composed of the sugars glucose and fructose. It is fat-free and cholesterol-free. One tablespoon of honey is 64 calories. Honey has a healthy glycemic index, meaning that its sugars can be gradually absorbed into the blood stream.

Honey is produced in every American state. According to the LSU AgCenter, Louisiana honey production for 2011 was 1.9 million pounds. The top five honey producing states in 2011 were North Dakota, California, South Dakota, Montana and Florida. Honey production in 2011 was 148 million pounds.

Americans import honey in order to meet our consumers’ demand.

COMMON HONEY BEE CLASSIFICATION

Kingdom: Animal
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Order: Hymenoptera
Family: Apidae
Subfamily: Apinae
Genus & Species: Apis mellifera

ANATOMY

TERMS TO KNOW

  • Apiary - bee yard

  • Apiculture - beekeeping

  • Brood - the offspring produced by the colony

  • Brood Cells - cells that house developing bees

  • Cells - a hexagonal wax chamber built at a slight upward angle by honey bees

  • Colony - the group of honey bees living together

  • Comb - a structure made up of hexagonal wax cells

  • Drone - male members of the colony

  • Hexagon - a polygon with 6 sides and 6 angles

  • Hive - a home to a colony of bees

  • Honeycomb - the 6-sided wax cells in a beehive

  • Pollen - the yellow or green powdery substance produced by flowers

  • Propolis - a resin-like material collected from trees by bees and used to construct and seal parts in the beehive and protect the hive from the elements

  • Royal Jelly - a very high-protein, milky, yellow syrup that young worker bees secrete from glands inside their heads and feed to larvae

  • Worker - the female bee that performs all the jobs, both inside and outside the hive, necessary for the survival of the colony

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