Hive Check 6/1/16

Hello all Chris here with a post from my trip to the bee hives on campus to do a hive check. As some of you may know my group and I did our ecology project on bee interactions between fragrances and nectar concentrations. Here at the campus we have Orange Italian Honeybees which were quite adorable and a little smaller than the Caucasian Honeybee which I believe is the other species that we have here on campus.

 
Spotting the queen was quite exhilarating for both instances, both queens were very active when we saw them, moving around quite a lot.


Overall the experience was very fun and I learned a lot about how bees choose to make their wax, wax caps that bulge out of the comb are for drones (bigger bees) and wax caps that are level are for brood (larva). I also learned from Mary Whitfield that bees also eat pollen for protein and eat honey for carbohydrates.

Unfortunately I was not able to handle any of the hive sections because there were no gloves big enough to fit my hands but I my hands did get very close to the Italian Honeybee queen.


Over the course of my project combined with this field trip, I realized that I never knew why I was afraid of bees, they are quite gentle when you don't hinder them from doing their jobs, while I was on location for my ecology project I sat on the ground next to two bushes not wearing a bee suit with hundreds of bumble bees around me and was not stung once, I can only imagine how many bees were in these hives and had some land on me and my hand but I just brushed them off gently.