Honey Bees

Today we went to a apiary. We got to see a honeycomb and the bees were climbing all around on it. We learned how there are 3 diferant types of bees: Queen, Drone (male), and worker. The queen lives 1-2 years. The Drone lives until it mates then it dies and the worker only lives 5-7 weeks.

The way a queen larva is made is the worker feeds the larva royal jelly and that is what makes it a Queen. The workers make more then one so the first one that haches stings the other larva and kills them. The way you can tell a queen larva from the others is that it sticks out on the honeycomb and looks like a peanut.

The comb is made up of wax and honey. Larvae, honey and pollen are all stored in the comb which is shaped like a hexagon. The super, which stores the excess honey, is how the beekeepers get the honey so they do not disturb the larvae. The super is an extra box that is placed on top of the main hive. The hive has an opening at the bottom so that the bees can come and go and get pollen. We saw a showing box that had a comb in it so we could see how it looked.

When the beekeeper wants to get the honey they take a special knife and scrape off the top layer of wax which caps the honey. They do that on both sides. They place the frame into the extractor, which is like a large salad spinner, and use the crank that spins it which creates centrifugal force. There is a drain at the bottom. You pull the lid off and put the honey through a sieve and then you put it into a jar and sell it. 

We learned that there are lots of things that could go wrong such as a beetle infestation. They lay their larvae in the cells and destroy the honeycomb and honey. They can also be infested with ants, moths and another disease which cannot be cured so they have to burn the whole thing. :(

At the end we got to taste a flavored tube of honey. I tried blueberry and lemon but the lemon wasn't very good. We also bought a jar of honey. We learned that local raw honey is good for allergies. When we got home we tried apples dipped in honey.