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Honey and Bees — Honey Bee Education

Early Life of a Queen Bee

Honey Bee Education Little Keepers Queen Bee

Early Life of a Queen Bee

Creating royalty is a bee’s specialty! The most important single bee in the hive starts from a fertilized egg which is actually exactly the same type of egg as any other worker bee. Drones (males) are actually unfertilized eggs, but more on that in another post! Depending on the situation in which the colony finds itself needing a queen the egg will either be laid in a queen cup (a cell designed specifically for raising a queen-planned) or a worker cell (these are used to make a queen in an emergency situation-unplanned).  In the picture above you can see a...

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Honeycomb perfection

Honey Bee Education

Honeycomb perfection

Honey bees have long been regarded as symbols of thrift and industry.  They work very hard for what they have and any decision that requires the consumption of hard earned resources is not taken lightly. Honeycomb is a perfect example of minimizing resources and maximizing efficiency.  Making wax is an expensive proposition for bees. To make 1 pound of wax, bees must consume roughly 8 pounds of honey! So when we look at the cost to the hive, they need a structure that maximizes storage space and minimizes material required.  Well, it’s not a coincidence that bees settled on a hexagon...

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Hard to beat the smell of a honeybee!

Honey Bee Education

Hard to beat the smell of a honeybee!

As social insects and foragers, honey bees rely heavily on their sense of smell.  They use this sense for communication, finding food, and detecting threats.  Honey bee's antennae their primary method of scent detection and contain 170 odor receptors. This is a lot for an insect – by comparison, fruit flies have 62 and mosquitos have 79. Bees must detect scent in flight, so their sense of smell must be very sensitive. Once a scent is detected on the antennae, the bee’s olfactory path processes the information, and allows the bee to determine how relevant the smell is to her search for...

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Healing Honey

Honey Bee Education Wellness

Healing Honey

Honey has been used as a wound treatment for thousands of years. Before the advent of antibiotics it was common for medical professionals to recommend the application of honey to cuts and burns to help with healing. In the last few decades there has been a growing amount of clinical evidence that has shown the effectiveness of honey in this application. The physical properties of honey alone have a positive impact on the wound healing environment. Honey is acidic with a pH of 3.2-4.5. It is well known that topical acidification of wounds increases the release of oxygen from hemoglobin which...

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Make a bee line!

Honey Bee Education Little Keepers

Make a bee line!

Have you heard the term “making a beeline”?  It means to make a straight line to your destination without delay.  As honey bees forage and fly from flower to flower they are constantly calculating a vector (straight line) back to their hives. It's a complex process that scientists don't yet fully understand.  However, research has shown that in addition to this calculated vector, honeybees use the sun as well as a mental map area landmarks to help them navigate. I wish I had this ability with my car keys...or even my car in a parking lot...Before the invention of Pokemon...

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