I visited Ed Knittle from Mahoning Valley a few weeks ago. Ed, a friend from the gym and a former student’s parent, is a beekeeper. We had spoken before about his beehives, and it was time I finally got there to observe and learn more of his hobby and the bees’ importance. After a detailed explanation of honeybees and their hives, he “geared up” in his beekeepers outfit, and in few minutes, we were at one of the hives.

Ed wore an outfit with cuffs and sleeves that closed tightly, a belt around his waist, long cuffed gloves, and of course headgear with plenty of netting. He lit up his smoker to calm the bees and then gradually and slowly took the roof off the hive and separated the supers. The hive has a brood chamber with frames on the bottom where the queen lays the eggs. Atop that are the supers with frames where the honey is stored.

The hive had a “bunch” of bee activity when we got there, but when he began to disturb the hive there were worker bees everywhere. Keep in mind, a healthy honeybee hive has about 40,000 workers. The workers are the lifeblood of the hive. Worker bees are sterile female bees. Their ovipositor (egg-laying organ) is now a stinger.

In warm weather a queen bee lays more than a thousand eggs, most of which develop into workers. The egg is placed at the bottom of a six-sided brood cell. After it hatches, other worker bees feed the larva bee milk and beebread (honey and pollen mixed).

After nine days the larva is finished eating, spins a cocoon around itself and remains in the pupa stage for about two weeks, gradually developing legs, wings, etc. About 24 days after hatching from its egg, the worker chews out of its waxy cell covering and begins a regimen of jobs.

The first few days of a worker’s life involves cleaning the hive and then feeding new worker or drone larva. After about 12 days the worker bee’s wax glands are most active and they scrape this wax from their abdomens and with their jaws begin shaping the nearly perfect six-sided cells. Some workers remain as house bees and accept nectar from the field bees returning to the hive.

They swallow some of the nectar and hold it in a honey sac (a pre-stomach organ) where the complex sugar of nectar is simplified so that it can turn into honey. In the hive the thousands of hive bees fan their wings, evaporating any excess water as the honey gets stored in the cells of the honey frames.

The field bees are constantly using their ultraviolet vision to locate flowers to keep drinking up the nectar and gathering the flower’s pollen. They fly miles a day in this task. As the field bees age, they begin their new role as guard bees. These bees greet and investigate the field bees as they return to the hive and do just what their name implies: They guard the hive.

Any intruder, including a bee from another hive, is repulsed. The hive is so efficient that as the end of September nears, the drones are removed from the hive so more food is available for the queen bee and other workers.

I have a space limitation so I will continue more information on the bee hives, the activity in it, and special threats to honeybees and hives in a few weeks.

Test Your Outdoor Knowledge: True/False, A worker bee will die shortly after stinging another animal, or you, of course.

Last Week’s Trivia Answer: A queen, drones, and workers are found in a hive, but not soldiers.

Contact Barry Reed at breed71@gmail.com.