Do you ever get stung by the bees?

I usually get stung at least once per visit to the garden. Yes, it hurts every time but it varies depending on where I get stung. If I get stung on a finger it is the worst and lasts about 5 minutes. But 10 minutes later I won’t be able to remember where I got stung. If I get stung on the leg or arm it won’t hurt as much but it will last longer. If I get stung in the ankle I often barely notice but it is the worst because my
ankle becomes sore and lasts the longest. Each spring I have to get my body acclimated to the venom by getting a few stings so that my hand doesn’t swell. After I get stung I thank the bee for giving its life to a
worthy cause.

Why don’t you wear gloves when you are opening the hives?

Good question. I do sometimes. Since the pandemic I wear disposable gloves most of the time. Not because it will protect from bee stings. It does not. I wear disposable gloves so that my fingers don’t get all sticky with honey and propolis. I am always on the lookout for the queen. If I see her and she isn’t marked I want to be ready to pick her up and mark her. It takes more time to do that if I have to clean
my hands. It’s faster to rip off a glove, get my marker prepared, pick her up and mark her. If I don’t mark her when I find her I can spend half an hour looking for her if I don’t do it immediately.

Why do you want to mark the queen?

Sometimes we want to find the queen when we want to split the hive in the spring to make a new hive from an old hive. If she is marked it makes it easier to see her in a “sea” of bees. If all of my queens are marked and I find an unmarked queen it suggests that she is a new queen. The colored marking on her thorax tells me how old she is.

What do the marking colors tell you about the queen?

Not much except for the season she was born. The colors are a standard in common use throughout the world. Each color relates to the last two digits of her birth year.

Red is for years ending with 3 or 8 (example:2023 queen will have a red mark on her thorax.
Green is for years ending with 9 or 4
Blue is for years ending with 0 or 5
White is for years ending with 1 or 6
Yellow is for years ending with 2 or 7

Why do you only have five colors? Queens ought to have more color choices. Why not more colors?

The queen in this case doesn’t get to pick her color. The international standard determines what color she gets so all queens born in 2023 will all get the same color red. Buying a pallet of colors gets expensive. Five colors is sufficient because most queens only live to be 3 years old. In recent years that has dropped to two years. Before pesticides 4 to 5 years old was not unheard of.

What happens if the queen gets too old?

An old queen starts producing what is known as “shot gun” brood. The brood pattern looks as though someone shot the frame of brood with a shot gun. The brood cells don’t look uniform. The age of the brood is random across the whole frame. This makes it hard for the workers to feed and keep the brood warm. It can indicate a serious disease problem or that the queen is no longer able to lay fertile eggs which means its time to replace her with a new queen.

If a queen lives to be two or more years how long does a worker live?

It depends. It depends on the time of year and the function the bee was performing when it dies. All worker bees start out as nurse bees where they clean cells, feed brood and carry pollen and nectar in the hive. The older workers take on the tasks of gathering pollen, nectar, water, and or propolis. This involves flying sometimes long distances and many trips. During the summer a worker may live as long as 6 weeks. Bees born in the fall may live four to six months because their task involves keeping the queen warm and fed and a lot less flying and exposure to birds, spiders, and yellow jackets. But they have to live long enough to help the queen raise the first brood batch beginning in the spring. To do that successfully they need to be healthy. Otherwise, the hive won’t survive the winter into spring. To make that happen the beekeeper must ensure that the hive is healthy and well fed in the fall.

What is the reason for having one, two, or three boxes per hive?

If the beekeeper is doing his job right the number of boxes per hive indicates the size of the hive. A new hive will start small with just one or two frames in a box which is called a nuc (short for nucleus). As the brood nest expands the beekeeper will add a box as needed. My main production equipment is comprised of either 6 frame medium Styrofoam or 8 frame medium wooden boxes. The box styles and frame styles are the most popular among commercial beekeepers in the Western hemisphere. There are many other styles that are appropriate to other climates and bee management choices.

Why don’t you store the empty equipment in a shed instead of cluttering up the garden with your
boxes?

Good question. Maybe I’m just a lazy beekeeper. No, that can’t be the whole story. The real reason is that when insect pests inhabit the hive equipment during the summer the bees in a healthy hive can control the invasion of these pest to their hive. The main culprits are small hive beetles and wax moths. If hive equipment with unprotected honeycomb is kept outdoors during warm weather the wax moth can inhabit and ruin the honey and the honey frames. If the equipment is kept outdoors during the winter the temperatures kill the larva and eggs so that the following spring the equipment is in good shape for using again. If the equipment is kept indoors such as in a basement the wax moth larva will destroy the honey and frames. Some commercial beekeepers protect their unused equipment from wax moths by using mothballs. However, this is frowned upon if the equipment is to be used whenever
honey is to be produced for human consumption.

Do all those boxes have bees in them?

No. About half of the boxes are empty during the winter. Boxes are added to the hives as each hive expands in response to the increase of nectar and pollen resources in the spring. It is the job of the beekeeper to know when to add boxes.

I notice that some urban gardens paint their hive boxes. It makes the gardens look so pretty. Why
doesn’t Maxwell Street Gardens have pretty looking hives?

Since managing bees for 12 years I have learned there are two types of people. Those that find bees fascinating and are not intimidated by them and those that are afraid of them. So I like to keep my hives hidden from the public even if they are out in the open. One way toward that goal is to not paint the hive boxes. There are several reasons not to paint them. It takes time and money. Paint causes an
imbalance of the wooden box structure when the outside is protected from moisture and the inside is exposed to moisture. You might wonder why the inside isn’t painted as well to keep the wood sealed and balanced. It’s because coating the inside of the box is frowned upon if a beekeeper is selling a food item to the public. But as a beekeeper I want the box to be able to absorb some of the moisture from
inside of the hive to help with moisture balance inside the brood nest if the box isn’t completely insulated, which it is not. The natural weathered grey exterior doesn’t draw attention which helps with honey bee public relations. Pedestrians walking by tend not to notice the boxes if they aren’t painted. I have some boxes that are made of white expanded polystyrene and other boxes that are expanded
polystyrene that are painted green or reddish brown. Though these are made of plastic materials the insulation factor is much higher than wood. The bees perform better in them because the bees have an easier time of controlling the temperature in summer and winter. Temperature control is important to keep the brood at a constant temperature. A hive box with good insulation helps keep the bees warm
even when there are major outdoor temperature swings especially during the spring.