Honeybees through the year for the 5-14 Curriculum

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During the year, the seasons change, and as they do different things happen within the honeybee colony.

During the cold short days and long nights of winter the honeybee colony hibernates. Unlike many other related insects - such as bumble bees and wasps - the colony of honeybees does not die off during winter, but goes to sleep instead, and feeds very slowly off the reserve of pollen and honey which it has stored during the summer and autumn.

The colony huddles together in a cluster around the queen keeping her warm, about 30 ° C. They produce the necessary heat by vibrating gently burning up their food resources in the process. During the middle of winter, no eggs are laid by the queen, and the colony is almost completely dormant, only appearing on the mildest of days to perform cleansing flights.

At the end of winter as the temperature outside starts to rise and the first spring flowers blossom, the worker bees recommence forage flights for pollen and nectar. This encourages the queen to resume laying and is a critical time for the colony as food resources are in limited supply. The colony will need around 20 - 25 kilos of stores to survive the winter.

In spring when there is an abundance of flowers, rich in pollen and nectar, and, weather permitting foraging, the honeybee colony will expand rapidly. The number of young bees increases quickly and as the weather becomes warmer and the flow of nectar into the hive increases, the beekeeper will want to encourage the bees to store some of this nectar as honey which can be harvested for sale.

The beekeeper achieves this by increasing the available space within the hive by adding empty boxes above the brood area and putting a 'queen excluder' between the brood chamber and these honey supers so she can't lay eggs in the honey storage area.

By the summer time the colony will have increased in number until the nest is becoming overcrowded. The colony will then often try to split into two and the only way it can achieve this is by raising a new queen to support one half the colony while the original supports the other.

The colony will direct the existing queen to produce new queens and just before they emerge into the colony, the worker bees will initiate a special type of behaviour called swarming. Most of the adult worker bees will fill up with stores and depart the hive along with the original queen leaving the younger bees, grubs and eggs in the colony with the new queen(s). The colony will decide which of the new queens will survive.

Beekeepers try to manage their colonies so that swarming does not occur because this seriously depletes the colonies foraging capability. All going well during the summer months the beekeeper will also have a number of opportunities to harvest honey.

Towards the end of the summer, the mood of the honeybee colony changes. Fewer young bees are produced, as the queen's egg laying becomes much reduced, and instead of being filled with bee larvae, most of the combs are filled instead with stored honey and pollen. It is this ability to stockpile a reserve of food which allows the honeybee colony to survive through the winter.

The beekeeper aims to harvest from the bees as much of this surplus of honey as possible without compromising the colonies ability to survive the winter months . This involves careful management and often supplementary feeding with syrup and sugar.

Once brood production has stopped and honey is harvested the colony is prepared for winter. Disease treatment, supplementary feed, and quilts may be applied to ensure colony survival.

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