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BEE INFORMED
This is a fun informative page where you browse and learn about different parts of beekeeping and facts of bees and their world.
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The Queen Bee
The Queen Bee is the life blood of the hive. With out her the hive will eventually die. You will find that the majority of the time you will have only 1 queen present in the hive. Until that is they need a new one..
Queen Bee Laying An Egg
The Queen can lay up to 2000 eggs per day. That's almost her body weight in eggs! This is her sole purpose in life.
Eggs, eggs and more eggs!
The queen will lay her eggs that look like a little white comma standing upright. These newly hatched eggs that are now larvae will need to be fed over 100x per day, creating a little pool for it to eat in. The nurse bees will feed the larvae a nutrient rich substance that we beekeepers call "bee milk". This translucent pearly white brood food is made from the nurse bees after consuming protein rich pollen.
Eggs and larvae swimming in "bee milk"
This video show a close up of a healthy hive. Lots of eggs and lots of hatched larvae swimming in "bee milk".
Queen Cell
What may kind of look like a peanut shell is actually a queen cell. This is a new queen developing in the hive. Queens don't live forever, but unlike the summer workers bees that only live around 45 days. A queen can usually live up to 5 years. But now a days they are more likely to live for about 2-3 years. Unlike worker and drone bees, from egg to hatch the virgin queen will emerge at 16 days old. She has been fed Royal Jelly all through her development. This is different then the worker bee food. Royal jelly looks like vanilla pudding. But doesn't taste like it..
Hatching Queen Cell
This is a video of a virgin queen emerging from her cell.
Queen Supercedure Cells
This is a hive that has decided to raise a new queen. Either something isn't right with the queen or she died. They are in emergency mode and are raising over a dozen queen cells. They need to make sure that one succeeds or the hive is toast.
Holy Queen?
When we see a hole in the side of the queen cell or they are tearing them down. That is usually a good sign. That means you have a queen in the hive that is finding her competition and killing them. She will chew a small opening in the side of the wall of the cell and sting the queen inside the cell. The workers will then start tearing down the cell from that opening until the cell is gone. And in a matter of days you won't even know there was a queen cell there.
2 Queens?
This will be one of the few times you really see two queens in a hive together. The hive has raised a new queen to replace the old one. For whatever reason they didn't like the old one or she has given all she has to serve the hive and is slowing down. After the new queen has done her mating and has started laying eggs. When this happens the worker bees will remove the old queen and ball her up and cook her to death. And so the new queen lives on.
Can Bees Talk?
This video shows a queen calling out to her competition. Listen to the queen fluting as she searches for other queens to battle for the crown.
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