Time : 1-½ hours

Materials: elide, charts, pictures

Objectives: To help beekeepers understand the roles that the individual members of a colony have on the colony as a whole, and to inform them of the various kinds of bees.

I. The Colony

1. A colony of honey bees will have a fertile female or queen, many male bees (or drones) and many thousand infertile females or workers. These classes of bees together form a unit or collection of individuals which, if separated from the colony unit would shortly die.

2. The Queen

- usually there is only one queen to a colony, and her sole duty is to lay eggs. She resembles a worker but with a much longer abdomen and a dark shiny thorax or back. The queen is fed almost entirely on a food secreted by the young worker bees called royal jelly which in rich in proteins. The number of eggs she lays, therefore, will depend on the amount and kind of food she is fed, the number of young workers to incubate the eggs and the environmental conditions. She lays eggs that may hatch into drones (infertile eggs), workers or new queens (fertile eggs).

The (European) queen hatches from a special peanut-shaped cell in 16 days. After emerging, the queen will take her mating flight 5-10 days later, where she will mate with several drones. If a virgin queen does not mate after two weeks, will probably be a poor, drone-laying queen. Queens can live several years.

The queen has a special odor or substances which keeps the colony unit together. If the queen is removed, the worker bees will start to make preparations to make a new queen. Queenless hives lack organization and could be more aggressive than queen right hives.

3. The Drone

- The drone is a larger and heavy looking bee, with very large eyes and chunky abdomen. His sole function is to mate with new queens; he does no work and cannot sting. Normally, high drone populations are only tolerated when ample food is coming into the hive; when the honey season is over, drones are evicted from the hive, to die.

- European drones take the longest to emerge, up to 24 days. If you are using the imported bee (European), drone production should be encouraged, since there would be few drones available to mate with virgin queens. When using the native bee, drone production should be limited.

4. The Worker

- There are anywhere from 5,000 to 75,000 workers in one colony. They are called workers because they do the house and foraging work required for colony survival. The task of the workers, includes feeding larvae (undeveloped bees), tending brood (immature bees), feeding and tending the queen, guarding the hive, evaporating nectar to make honey, packing pollen, and maintaining broodnest temperatures. As the workers age (3 weeks or so) they begin to leave the hive to forage for food. Once a scouting forager locates a food source, the distance and direction of the food is communicated by a combination of dancing scent and sounds. They are foragers only for about another 3 weeks before they die.

It takes 21 days for a (European) worker to emerge. They have special legs equipped to pack the loose pollen grains, and have special glands to secrete wax, stinging venom, and royal jelly. Workers collect nectar, pollen, water and propolis or glue, returning to their hive with it. See attached diagram.

II. Races of bees and bee relatives.

1. Wasp (Vespidae)

- wasps are not bees but arc often mistaken for boos by many people. Wasps make their homes with paper-like material or mud. While some do sting aggressively, wasps are beneficial pollinators and insect controllers, being parasitic and predatious on many insect pests. Unfortunately, some wasps also prey on honey bees.

2. Bumble Bees and Carpenter Bee (Bombidae and Xylocopidae)

- those are large, hairy bees varying in color from blue-black to black and yellow stripes. They live in the ground, grass hatch or dry wood. Although they do not produce a significant amount of honey, they are valuable as pollinators of many fruits, seeds or vegetable crops.

3. Stingless Bees (etc.)

- There are many races of other social bees, (living in hives) and solitary bees, (living alone) that are important pollinators. The stingless bees (Trigona and Melipona) will store honey in nests, but it is generally too little to attract most beekeepers. Since they are beneficial, colonies should not be destroyed.

4. Honey Bee (Apis)

a) The Rook or Giant Bee (Apis dorsata)

Rock bees are nomadic, rarely staying long in one place. When they fly, farmers in the field report they sound like a passing airplane. The colony consists of a single comb hanging from branch of a tree, roof or abandoned ceilings. The worker is light brown while the queen is darker and longer; the drone is black and about the size of a worker.

Rock bees produce good honey and wax, working longer hours sometimes than other honey bees. Honey can be harvested without destroying the hive, two to three a year when smoke and proper precautions are taken. Yields of up to 35 kg. during a year have been recorded. Smoke seams to control their volatile temper and while they will not live inside a hive box, groups of colonies can be raised together.

b) The Little Bee (Apis florea)

These bees are smallest of the honey bees, and are also nomadic. They make small, hand sized combs in tree branches, caves, bushes, empty boxes, or ceilings. The workers are orange with black and white stripes. The queen is golden brown and the drones black with grey hair. Again, they do not produce much honey (0.5 to 1 kg.) but some countries are finding them a gentle, and manageable honey bee.

c) The Indian Bee (Apis idica cerana)

This bee is used in India and other countries as the main Asian Honey Bee. It is easily housed in boxes, tins, jars and wall recesses. While there are regional varieties, the potential for this bee in the Philippines is just beginning to be realized. The wilder, swarm-prone strains can be bred for more domestic qualities.

On the average, colonies can yield 3-5 kg., although improved strains have been reported to produce 18 kg. or more. It can be a good producer, gentle and relatively non-swarming, but are lose predictable, can steal food from weaker hives aggressively, and seem to have little defense against wax-moth and other pests that enter the hive. They use little propolis or bee glue, which might account for these invasions.

d) The European Bee (Apis mellifers)

This bee, originally from Europe, has been naturalized in many parts of the world, including North and South America. It is a very good honey producer, averaging 45 to 180 kg. in good honey-yielding areas. It is similar to the Indian bee in it habits, making its home in enclosures like hollow trees, caves, and boxes. It is well adapted to life in moveable frames hives. Importation of the European bee should be restricted to well-equipped, responsible agencies with quarantine arrangements. To avoid the importation of diseases and pests common in the U.S. and Europe, which could be passed to native bees, private beekeepers should consider improving native bees first.