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Part III: Getting Started with Responsive Beekeeping

Updated: Jun 5

It's time to add bees to the mix!

a beekeeper inspects a box hive made of cedar, they are pulling a frame of brood up out of the box
a beekeeper inspects a box hive made of cedar, they are pulling a frame of brood up out of the box

Welcome back to the Responsive Beekeeping blog series. I got quite busy with tending to bees over the last couple of weeks but today it is raining (hooray), and I can finally sit at a computer again.


Let's get started...

So far we've talked about beekeeping practice, equipment, hive designs and how to source bees. You can read the opening blog here. And the second blog here.


Next we're going to look at what goes on inside the hive. To start, I am going to share three videos about hive anatomy. Then below, I'll explain each part of the hive in a little more detail.


The Anatomy of a Honey Bee Hive

A 2 minute video guided tour through the hive and all the bees inside- including the workers, drones and the queen bee.

A 15 minute lecture on the importance of queen bees plus a guided hive anatomy tour inside of a five frame nucleus hive.

This is a 60 minute deep dive into hive anatomy.


The Importance of Queen Bees

As a queen breeder, I'm obviously quite passionate about queens. But there's a reason for that! As the reproductive engine of the honey bee hive, the queen is vital to a hive's ability to grow and thrive throughout the season. Her genetic make up is carried forward into both worker and drone bees, and thus her health is important for the health of the whole hive.


Watch a queen lay an egg in the video here-


The queen bee is the longest-living bee within the honey bee colony. She can live 2-4 years and can lay around 1500-2000 eggs per day. The queen bee starts off as any fertilized worker egg. Nurse worker bees then decide to re-queen the hive and build a queen cup around the egg. The egg is fed a specific diet of dry pollen and royal jelly, which allows the larvae to develop into a queen honey bee. The queen cup is extended into a queen cell before it is sealed by the workers to incubate. The queen emerges in 14-16 days.


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Once born, the queen bee will take a mating flight to mate with

several drones, providing all the fertilization of eggs she will need for her lifetime. She will then return to the hive, her abdomen will expand and elongate and she will spend her life laying thousands of eggs.


Queen bees are cared for by a retinue, a cadre of nurse bees who tend to the queen's every need. The retinue keeps the queen warm, feeds her and grooms her so she can focus on her role as an egg layer. You can watch a video of a queen retinue here:


a short video demonstrating a queens retinue

At TKB we work with two types of bees, Carniolan Spartan and Italian Pol-line 2.2 queens. Now if you're not a genetics geek that may sound like word salad. I'll try to explain. Carniolan bees are a subspecies of Apis Mellifera or the Western honey bee. Originally from Slovenia, these bees are disease resistant and have the capacity to overwinter well in the Northeast. The Spartan line is a subset of the Carniolan line selected by beekeepers for Varroa resistance using brood assays.


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The Italian bees are originally from Italy. They are a productive and popular bee in the US. The Pol-line queen bees are a subset of Italian bees selected by the USDA ARS lab in Baton Rouge, LA for their mite resistance. Scientists at the USDA used brood assays to identify Varroa sensitive hygiene (VSH) to suppress mite reproduction.


In our operation it is a priority to work with bees who are resistant to Varroa mites. We use both brood assays and instrumental insemination to produce high quality Varroa resistant queen bees who can survive and thrive in our ecology. You can read more about how we make our queens on our FAQs page.



a sheet of capped worker brood comb with worker bees walking on it, there is one drone sticking up in the middle.
a sheet of capped worker brood comb with worker bees walking on it, there is one drone sticking up in the middle.

The Role of Workers & Drones

The worker bees make up the majority of the population within the beehive. They are all female. Genetically workers contain genes from the queen bee and one of the many drones with whom she mated.


The moment the worker bee emerges from her cell, 21 days after being laid, she begins her work for the collective. With a lifespan of only 6 weeks, her first job is to clean up her own cell so the queen can lay an egg in it. Workers make up the largest percentage of the hive population.






A worker bees' life occurs in 3 stages-


  1. They spend the first part of their 6-week life as nurse bees. They help care for the brood, or eggs and larvae the queen bee has laid.

  2. The second part of their life they spend as hive tenders, cleaning up the hive and dragging out the dead bees and other debris that has accumulated within the hive.

  3. Foraging is the final stage of a worker bee's life. Foragers spend their days flying up to 5 miles in search of nectar, pollen, water and mycelium for the hive. They bring this back to the hive and pass it off to hive tending worker bees and then fly back out to bring in more resources.


Older bees will also defend the hive from unwanted guests.


Drone bees are the male bees in a hive. They have a critical job to disseminate the genetics of their mother line. Their sister worker bees feed and tend to them. Drones have incredibly strong flight muscles because they fly near and far to find Drone Congregation Areas (DCAs) where they mate with virgin queens. In the process of mating with a queen the drone inverts and dies. To read more about DCAs check out Julia Mahood's work on DCA Mapping. Drones normally only make up around 3% of the bee hive population, and they are often culled by the workers before Winter.


a foraging worker bee with pollen pants eats out of a nectar cell
a foraging worker bee with pollen pants eats out of a nectar cell

Beeswax, Brood, Nectar & Pollen

Inside of each hive, beeswax is the foundation upon which bees build their nest. Secreted from the underbellies of 7-12 day old worker bees, beeswax is chewed into hexagon shapes by festoons of bees. Bees festoon by hanging in chains and using gravity to draw straight combs. Combs of wax can hold both young and food.


Young bees in the egg, larval and pupa stages are called brood.


Bees collect two critical food sources from their ecology. Nectar is stored in the bees' honey stomach and transferred by proboscis to the younger workers inside the hive. Nectar is the carbohydrate bees collect to feed their young and grow their nest. When there's extra nectar, bees dehydrate nectar into honey and store it for times of dearth.


Pollen is a protein critical to the development of young bees. It is collected from flowers using the pollen baskets on a worker bees back legs. Foragers then push the pollen into cells near the brood nest so younger bees can access it. Inside the hive pollen is is mixed with nectar to make bee bread. Bee bread is a fermented food fed to young worker larva so they can grow and pupate.


Bees collect water to hydrate themselves and cool the hive. They also collect mycelium and micronutrients from the ecology.


a peak inside the top of a beehive, coated with red brown propolis
a peak inside the top of a beehive, coated with red brown propolis

Propolis &

the Propolis Envelope


When days begin to shorten, and the nights get colder bees begin to collect propolis. Propolis is a tree resin bees mix with enzymes in their digestive system. This mixture is then used to coat the inside of the hive. You can see the sticky, red brown propolis collected from spruce trees along the edges of the hive in this picture. Propolis has anti-fungal properties and is considered an additional defense against disease. The coating of propolis on the inside of a hive is called the propolis envelope.


Each part of the hive from worker bees to propolis play a vital role in the hives ability to grow and pollinate trees, shrubs and flowers in their ecology.


Understanding what is happening inside the hive helps us as beekeepers make informed decisions about their care, and our interventions throughout the season. In my next blog I'll talk more about seasonal honey bee hive care and will dive deeper into the Varroa mite biology and management.

two students work a box hive together, summer 2023
two students work a box hive together, summer 2023

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