Queen Bees Emerging!

This past summer, several of us who regularly check bees, experienced a rare sighting: A queen emerging from her cell!

She was in the process of chewing her way out when we pulled the frame with her cell on it. Another hive in the apiary needed a queen, so we quickly moved the frame with the queen into her new domain. 

I have often been asked by non-beekeepers how a queen becomes a queen. When I describe the process--that the current queen lays an egg which is fed an exclusive diet of royal jelly during her larval stage--the listener always wears an astonished look. Much like royal lineage among the human species, the queen produces her own successor. 

Queen bee emerging from her cell: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdOuTkT57qo

Another nifty aspect of a queen’s birth is that she announces her presence through a series of sounds, what Bee Culture magazine calls “acoustic signals.”  The new queen announces her arrival by piping, calling on the workers to help her escape her cell. The sounds also serve another important, although somewhat darker, purpose.

As many of us have noticed during springtime inspections, when a colony has one capped queen cell there may be several others as well. Each cell contains a developing queen. The queen that emerges first announces her arrival by tooting and releasing pheromones. The mature queens still confined in their cells answer the tooting with a piping sound of their own. The queen that is now free from her cell and roaming the hive follows the sounds to the other queen cells and eliminates the competition. This ensures that the colony will indeed have just one viable queen.

Clip of queens quacking, piping

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9naKEy1v6Lw

The queen is the single most important bee in the hive. Without her, the colony would collapse. Whenever we do hive inspections, we look for evidence that she is alive and well and continuing to lay her astonishing quota of up to 2,000 eggs a day. I am always thrilled when we spot her scampering across a frame, knowing that seeing her is proof positive that the hive is thriving.

I have not yet been fortunate enough to hear the piping, tooting or quacking sounds (amplified on the clip) but at some future hive check, if we listen carefully, we may be rewarded with the queen’s chorus.

Enjoy!

Congratulations to Pam Hepp!

We’re happy to congratulate LBC member Pam Hepp on her multiple wins at the 2025 DE State Fair! A home-apiarist with 8 hives, Pam won the Memorial Beekeeper award for the "Best in Show" honey. The honey won its color class (amber) and then was selected as the winner of all 4 color classes -- dark, amber, light amber, and light. AND... Pam also garnered a second place ribbon for a honey frame submission. She noted, "The governor was a terrific guy, interested in how both the bees and beekeepers are doing." Congratulations, Pam!

Lewes Bees and the Children's Learning Garden

Saturday July 26 was Pollinator Day at the Children's Learning Garden! Lewes in Bloom invited us to partner with them to teach children about the importance and work of pollinators. The children saw honeybees in action in our Observation Hive, and buzzed around the garden pretending they were bees collecting pollen. A very fun morning for all!

How Honey Bees Survive the Winter

Have you ever wondered what honeybees do during the winter months? Do they hibernate? How do they stay warm?  How do they survive?

We all know honeybees are remarkable creatures, but what they do throughout the winter months to ensure the survival of the colony is one of the more remarkable elements of their lives in the hive.

They live off the honey and pollen gathered throughout the season, they form a cluster in the hive next to this food, and they flex their wing muscles to generate heat, keeping the ambient temperature in the hive around 92 degrees. 

Some estimates suggest the bees need at least 50-60 pounds of honey to survive the winter in the Mid-Atlantic region, so beekeepers must decide how much honey to leave for the bees when they remove honey stores from the hives.

In addition, bees born in the autumn will remain in the hive throughout the winter, living up to six months, compared to the six-week lifespans of bees born during the summer months.

Before winter sets in and temperatures begin to dip below 55 degrees Fahrenheit, worker bees boot the Drones, the male bees, out of the colony. Drones have one major function: mating with queens from other colonies. What they do when they are not hunting for a queen is eat. Drones consume three times more food than workers. That’s food the colony can’t spare in winter when nothing is blooming, so the drones have to go.

Bees winterize the hive, sealing cracks with propolis, a substance gathered from trees and plants visited by the bees in their search for pollen and nectar.

Bees are extraordinarily hygienic, and as part of their winter housekeeping chores, they remove dead bees through the hive’s entryway. When winter temperatures inch up into the mid to high 50s, you may see honeybees flying. They may be out on a “cleansing flight,” taking advantage of the warmer weather to relieve themselves or look for any pollen or nectar that may be available. 

Or like many of us after a cold winter, they may just be eager for spring.

How Bees Make Honey

While sipping your tea sweetened with honey, have you ever wondered how that amber goodness came to be?  Of course, you know that honeybees had something to do with it. But the exact process? A little fuzzy?

Honeybees are specialists. Nature designed the bodies of worker bees to carry food to the colony, and those bodies begin the process that will eventually transform the flowers’ nectar into honey.

The first step is to gather nectar. Forager honey bees will visit more than a thousand flowers to fill their honey stomachs with just 40 milligrams of nectar. After an hour of foraging, and with a full honey stomach, the bees will return to the hive to unload their cargo. 

Once they arrive, the foragers transfer the nectar from their stomachs to a bee in the hive. When the nectar arrives at the hive, it consists of about 70 to 80 percent water. The foragers transfer the nectar from bee to bee, mouth to mouth, allowing enzymes in their stomachs and salivary glands to break down the sugars in the nectar. Through this process, some of the water in the nectar evaporates.

The bees then place the nectar in honeycomb cells for the final phase before capping. The water content at this point is still too high, so bees will fan the nectar to evaporate water to a content of about 18 percent. The honey is now ready to be capped and stored for the bees’ future use. Or to be extracted by humans to be used to sweeten tea and other foods.

Just a few facts to leave you with to ensure a full appreciation of the amount of work involved by the bees in creating this delicious substance.

To produce a single pound of honey, a colony of bees needs to collectively fly about 55,000 miles, the equivalent of orbiting the earth twice, and visit about two million flowers.

The bees cap the honey with wax, a substance they also produce. And in fact, bees need to consume between 7 and 8 pounds of honey to produce one pound of wax .  

The next time you savor a spoonful of honey, remember the bees’ and the amount of energy and effort it took to get it to your table.

Coast Day at UD!

Stop by our exhibit booth at Coast Day at UD's College of Earth, Ocean and Environment in Lewes on Sunday October 6 from 10:00 to 3:00. Coast Day highlights the many ways that UD works together with organizations such as ours to understand our area's rich environmental resources and to better serve local communities. At our booth you will see honey bees working actively in our Observation Hive, talk with beekeepers, and learn how you can help to protect our bees and other pollinators. The event is free and open to all.