Nature Notes
Honeybee Hives Consist of Queen, Workers, and Drones
By Patricia Martin

A couple of weeks ago, I spent a lovely afternoon with one of our Island residents, who said, "I have more workers than anyone else on the Island. They are foreign and mostly female." He was referring to his bees. His name is Allen Burt, Mackinac Island's only beekeeper.

Last spring, Mr. Burt set up two hives near the airport. During the summer, one of the queens died, so he combined the two hives to make one large one. When he said that he had more workers than anyone else on the Island, he wasn't kidding. Within a hive during the summer months, there are more than 60,000 bees, and by combining the two - well, you do the math! When he said they were foreign, he was referring to the fact that these are Italian honey bees. Italian honey bees are yellow-brown in color with distinct dark bands. This race originally came from the Apennine Peninsula in Italy. They are the number one choice of bee keepers because they are gentle, productive, and do well in many different climates. The only disadvantage of the Italian honey bee is that they maintain a large winter colony that requires large stores of food.

Allen Burt shows his father's beeline box.

Mr. Burt mentioned that most of his workers are female; this is true. Within a hive, there are three kinds of bees. The first is the queen, who is the heart and soul of the hive. There is only one queen, and without her there is no hive. She is the largest bee in the colony and has a long, graceful body. She is the only female with fully developed ovaries. Her purpose is to produce chemical scents that help regulate the unity of the colony and to lay eggs, lots and lots of eggs. In one day, she can produce more than 1,500 eggs, and she lays them in 30- second intervals. The queen is tended by a flock of attendants, who see to her every need. She is incapable of doing anything for herself. She can neither clean herself nor feed herself; she can't even leave the hive to relieve herself. Her helpers take care of her so she can go about laying eggs. One of the things that Mr. Burt did while working on the hive was to check on the queen. You may wonder how he could find her among all of the bees. He had a pretty good idea of approximately what area of the hive she would be in. When you purchase a hive of bees, he said, you can buy a queen marked with a yellow dot painted on her back, to help locate her.

The next group of hive residents is also female, and they make up the majority of the hive's population. These are the worker bees. These females lack fully developed ovaries and are smaller, with shorter abdomens; on their hind legs, they possess pollen baskets, allowing them to carry pollen from the field to the hive. When people talk about being "busy as a bee," they are referring to these workers. They have many jobs, depending on their age. These jobs include cleaning the hive, tending to the bee larvae, looking after the queen, taking nectar from the foraging bees and depositing it into the hive, adding enzymes to the nectar so it will develop honey, and fanning it to evaporate excess water and help maintain the proper temperature in the hive. They also produce beeswax to build a new wax comb and to cap off cells containing honey and developing pupae. The worker bees guard the hive from predators. These are the bees with barbed stingers, which, when jabbed into a mammal, remain in the victim and the bee dies. (They can sting other insects multiple times, and their barb doesn't catch).

When their life is about half gone, the worker bees venture outside the hive and begin foraging for nectar, pollen, water, and propolis (resin collected from trees). Bees must visit more than five million flowers to produce a single pint of honey. They will forage two to three miles in any one direction from the hive, in search of food. With all that they have to do, it is not surprising that they only live about six weeks in the summer, although workers live four to eight months in the quieter winter season.

The third type of bee in a hive is the male drone. Drones make up a small percentage of the hive's population, numbering only in the hundreds in the height of the summer. They are longer than a worker bee, with a barrel-like shape and huge eyes. The drone only has one purpose in life, and that is to mate with the queen. Mating occurs outside the hive, in mid-flight, up to 300 feet in the air. The drone mates with the female, and then dies, because the sex organ is barbed and is torn away, along with parts of the internal anatomy, when the queen separates from the drone.

There are a number of reasons that people keep bees. People have done so for thousands of years. Honey collection is certainly part of the attraction. Mr. Burt has collected two gallons of honey this summer, which he has shared with family and friends. Approximately 10 gallons of honey has been left in the hive to feed the bees throughout the winter.

Besides producing honey, bees are important pollinators. Honeybees account for about 80% of all pollination by insects, and it is estimated that without the honeybees' services, more than a third of the fruits and vegetables that humans consume would be lost. Bees also produce other products, including beeswax, propolis, and royal jelly.

Mr. Burt is not the first member of his family to keep bees. His father was also a beekeeper. At his house he showed me a small box that had been made for his father, known as a "beeline box." The purpose of the box was to help locate a wild bee hive. The keeper would place a food source in the box and catch a honey bee. He would release the bee, which would go back and tell others about the food. Other bees would come back to the box. The bee keeper would release the bees, noting the direction of their flight, and eventually be able to follow the bees back to their hive, as bees fly in a straight "beeline" back to the hive.

You can get stung by honeybees when working with them, although Mr. Burt says that he has yet to be jabbed. For the most part, honeybees are docile. I spent several hours with Mr. Burt working at the hive, and was not stung by a honeybee. We did wear beekeeping masks to help protect our faces while removing parts of the hive, but the bees did not seem particularly interested in us. Another precaution that he took when working with the hive was to smoke the bees. He took a clump of cotton and lit it on fire and placed it in the smoker. Cotton produces a thick, cool smoke which calms the bees. The smoker has a small bellows within it that can be used to blow the smoke around the hive. One theory is that smoke reminds bees of a forest fire and causes them to return to their hive, where they fan the brood furiously to keep them cool. They also begin to collect the honey in the hive in case they have to abandon their home. The thought is that they are so busy that they ignore the beekeeper. Another explanation is that the smoke covers the alarm scent that is given off by worker bees to put them in attack mode. The smoke confounds the bees' ability to communicate. Whatever the reason, smoking the hive seems to work.

I have just begun to touch on the fascinating world of bees and beekeeping. There is a lot more to it, and plenty of information available. I am sure Mr. Burt would be happy to talk with you about it. He also asks that if anyone thinks that they have found a hive that the honeybees have been building, please call him, and don't just destroy it. He'll be happy to help you with it.