Here is the
beekeeping tips for you. Come spring and you will notice honey bees swarming. Swarming is the process when bees, in the thousands, will fly with the queen bee in the attempt to mate with her and also find a new place they can build their home.
The bee hive is a very organized place. Each group of bees have their work cut out for them. There are the worker bees that need to build the bee hive, there are the bees that scout for new locations for hives and sources of nectar and there are the bees that server the queen bee that is only concerned with laying eggs in the cells of the hive.
The hive is divided into cells that are marked for honey and larvae. The queen bee goes about the hive depositing eggs in the cells and the worker bees cover the cell with wax to protect the larvae. It is surprising how the sex of the larvae is determined by the way the worker bee nurtures the young.
Some of the larvae will grow to be worker bees and some will grow to be females, which are searched out and killed by the queen bee. There can only be one queen bee in the hive. The worker bees will strive to save the female bees as they have to reproduce, these worker bees will do all they can to prevent the queen from killing all the female bees.
One of two things will happen in the spring every year. Either the workers will drive out the queen bee along with thousands of her workers, or the queen and her workers will drive out thousands of workers who will leave with one queen bee. This flying away in thousands is known as swarming and so a group of bees is called a swarm. They are actually trying to mate with the virgin queen and then look for a place to build their hive.
When bees swarm, the queen bee flies very high and a group of bees called drones try to catch up with her, while the workers fly in pursuit. The first drone to catch up with the queen bee mates with her and then dies. Once the mating is done the queen will retreat to a safe place and will be surrounded by thousands of her workers who protect her.
When you see something that looks like a hive on a tree it is actually hundreds of thousands of worker bees surrounding the queen bee protecting her from possible attack, while the scouts have gone out in search of a suitable place to build their hive. At this time they have no honey to sustain them and are very hungry.
Some bee keepers are very good at attracting swarms of bees to their man made hives where they cultivate their
honey making skills to the maximum.
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