Questions from a Grade 7 Class in Germany

Q1.  Ashwini.B:  How long does it take to make a honeycomb?

A1.  Bees need to eat lots of honey to make honeycombs.  If they have honey available to eat, they can build a comb the size of 4" x 6" in a few days.

Q2. Do bees see everything as humans?
A2.  No, bees' vision is very different than ours.  Honey bees can see ultraviolet light.  Their favourite colour is blue.  Here's a link which shows how bees see flowers:
How bees and humans see flowers

Q1. Ami:  When did people find out you can eat honey?
A1.  We're not sure when humans first started eating honey but I expect it was a very long time ago.  If honey leaked out of a hive, for example, if a branch broke in a storm exposing a bee hive and honey I'm sure humans would check it out because we're naturally very curious.

Q2. What temperature can bees survive in?
A2.  Bees can survive in a very cold winter.  In parts of Canada it can be as much as -40 Celsius in the middle of winter.  Bees don't hibernate in winter.  They stay awake in their hive and they form what we call a cluster.  They stand close together and shiver their wing muscles on their back to generate heat to keep each other warm.  They don't heat the whole hive, they only heat themselves.  Just like penguins, bees on the outside of the cluster will be colder and will slowly move to the center to get warmed up and then move back to the edge again.  So each bee gets a chance to get warmer.

Q.  Hayden: where do bees have the most population?????
A.  I'm not sure which country has the most bees.  The number of bees can be affected by how much food is available (flowers) and also the type of weather in that country.  At certain times in the year there can be a huge amount of bees in one state.  For example, in the USA when the almond trees are in bloom, the beekeepers there put all their hives on trucks and drive them to California so they can pollinate the almonds.

Q. Alex:how many breeds of bees are there in the world?
A. In North America there are about 3,000 different types of bees.  The honey bee is the only bee that makes large amounts of honey.  They make so much that the beekeeper can take some honey and they'll still have a lot left to eat.  There are some stingless bees in some countries that make honey as well but not as much.

Q.  Leon: How much honey could a bee make in one day?
A.  In her whole life a bee might make as much as 0.8 grams of honey.  When the circumstances are perfect for weather and sunshine, the flowers will put out more nectar and on those days the bees can bring in more nectar than on other days.

Q.  Jose: What do bees use honey for?
A.  Honey is food that gives the bees energy so they can do activities.  They make a lot of honey all summer so that in winter when there are no flowers available and it's cold, they can stay in the hive and eat honey.

There are more questions which I'll answer in the next post.

A Bumblebee's Tongue

This is a queen bumblebee that was in my back yard.  I had some sugar water made up for honey bees and I offered her some.

Watch as her long tongue comes out to lick it up.  And if you watch carefully you'll see a little inner tongue that comes out of the big tongue and sweeps up the nectar.

Now you can see exactly what a bumblebee does when she puts her tongue into a flower.

Not even honey bees can reach as far into a flower as a bumblebee can.

Bumblebees Play Soccer

In the last post we saw how researchers taught bumblebees how to pull string to reach a flower for food.  That was pretty cool.

This is pretty amazing.  They've taught bees how to play soccer.  First a fake bee was used to teach a bee how to move a ball into a circle to get a reward of sugar water.  After the bee figured out how to get the reward she could do it all on her own.

Then she taught other bees how to do it.  Watch this video to see for yourself:

Monkey See, Monkey Do

Have you ever heard the saying monkey see, monkey do?  Or the saying copy cat?  These are examples taken from animals where one monkey watches another and then learns something and does it.  Cats learn by watching other cats.  This is where the saying copy cat comes from.  If you watch kittens you will see they copy what their mother does.

Below are videos where researchers at a university in England did an experiment with Bumblebees.

First they taught one bee in a step by step way how to get sugar water out of a fake flower.  The next thing they did was put the taught bee with an untaught bee.  Can you guess what happened?  The bee that knew how to pull get the sugar water taught the other bee to do it too.  This is called social learning. Watch this video on how the bees were taught:

We already knew animals were smart and could teach each other but now we know that insects can too.  I guess we can't ever call an insect dumb.

It's No Zoo - Queens in Cages

Yes, these queen bees are in cages but it's not at the zoo.

I bet you're wondering why someone would put queen bees in cages. There's a really good reason.

In early spring in Canada (April and May) the bees are slowly getting busy as the weather gets warm.

Many beekeepers have hives with so many bees that they want to divide the hive. Beekeepers call it splitting or making splits. When they take the bees from one hive and separate them into two there's a small problem. There's only one queen.

Bees can make a new queen (I'll tell you how they do that another time) but it takes over a month for a queen to grow up, hatch and mate.

During that time the hive can't do very much. So many beekeepers purchase queens from Australia. In Australia the weather has been warmer and their queens are already grown up.

Australian beekeepers put a queen in each cage to send to Canada.

The queen can't travel alone, she's too important. The Australian beekeeper puts some ladies in waiting into the cage as well.

The ladies will feed the queen, give her a drink of water, and will groom her fur. She can't arrive in Canada looking anything less than beautiful and nicely groomed.

The cage has a small hole in one end. The beekeeper puts them into the cage and then plugs the hole with a cork plug. There's a hole in the other end too and it's plugged up with candy.

The ladies in waiting will feed the candy to the queen while they wait to arrive at their new home.

The bees will fly... but on a plane! Hundreds of queen cages are carefully packed in cardboard boxes for their trip.

When they arrive they are tired and thirsty. At the airport the beekeeper puts droplets of warm water on a small square of cloth so the bees can sip it and quench their thirst.

At the bee yard the queen can't just be put into the new hive in Canada. The bees don't know her or her special scent. If she was just placed in the hive, they might think she's an intruder and sting her.

The cage is put into the new hive and the queen is safe in her cage. The bees will chew and chew on the candy to open the hole and let the queen out. By the time they finish eating the candy they will know the new queen and her special smell (call pheromones) and they will happily accept her in their hive as their queen.

Do you think Australian queens buzz with an accent? Listen to the video of the bees in their cages (below).

(Thanks to John at Oxford Honey & Supplies in Burgessville, Ontario for allowing me to photograph the queens).

Wash Day

Do you ever have to help out at home? Would your parents ask you to help them clean?

Bees like to keep their house (hive) clean.

There are bees inside that are assigned the job to clean.

These photos and video show bees cleaning outside the hive.

They use their tongues like brooms and they sweep back and forth.


If you watch the video you'll see it's almost like a dance as they move their heads back and forth in a steady rhythm.

There's a saying: Many hands make light work. It's true that when more people help out the job gets done much faster.

I guess the bees' saying would be that many tongues make light work.

They understand the power of working together to get big jobs done.

That's probably why your parents ask if you can help out to. It makes everyone's job easier.

It's more fun to work when others are with you too.

See the bees sweeping with their tongues in the video below.

Karate Bee

Have you seen the Karate Kid movie? Karate has some really cool moves and so does this bee.

She's a guard bee and she's striking her karate pose.

What do you think she's saying? "Don't mess with me I'm protecting my hive." That's what she's saying.

Compare the first photo to the second one of a standing bee pictured below.

See the difference? The second bee is relaxed and just hanging around. She's not a guard bee.

Guard bees have the job of protecting the the hive. They're like security guards.

They have to check the ID of every bee that wants to come in the hive. They check ID by scent.

Bees from the same hive all have the same smell. If you smell right then you can come in.

When field bees fly back to the hive they'll go close to the guard bee. She'll turn her head, her antennae can sniff them.

But if there's a problem and the hive has strangers coming by, maybe bees from other hives, a hornet or a wasp, the guards will stand back on their legs in an attack mode.

If there's an emergency or danger from a bear, skunk, raccoon or some other creature the guard bees will release a chemical scent that tells the hive to attack. That's when more bees will come out and sting the intruder.

The bees know that they make precious golden honey that many creatures want to eat.

They guard their gold very well.