Inside: If you’re keeping bees for the first time, be sure to lead them to the best water source. Here are some ways to coax them to the right places.
Table of contents
- Ladies with a wicked thirst
- Nectar is full of water, but not enough
- What do honey bees do with all that water?
- How honey bees carry water to the hive
- How honey bees find a wet bar
- Tried and true drinking troughs for honey bees
- Leave a breadcrumb trail (of sorts) to the watering hole
- Now you’re ready for bees
Ladies with a wicked thirst
Did you know honey bees are a thirsty lot? That’s right, they need water all year long. But during the scorching summer months of nectar dearth, a reliable watering hole is an absolute necessity. Without it, the entire colony could go belly up. Because it’s so important, some foragers spend their lives finding and fetching water so their sisters can drink. No pressure, right?
So, what kind of water do bees seek? Well, they’re pretty picky. They need a supply that won’t dry up, and they like water with a nice odor—mossy, moldy, or stinky does the trick. In fact, nothing makes a bee happier than a little musty-scented mud puddle.
But bees also need a place to stand where they can drink at leisure and not drown. Hey, who can blame them? We all like to enjoy a drink without an unexpected swimming lesson.
Nectar is full of water, but not enough
Since nectar is about 80 percent water, much of the water in a nectar-collecting hive comes from flowers. But even that’s not enough, which means some worker bees search for water they can bring back to the hive.
But finding water is not as easy as it sounds. Because a bee’s vision is different from ours, bees may have trouble seeing water from the air. Many people think bees are more likely to find water by scent than by sight, which explains why water with an odor attracts honey bees so well.
Once bees learn a scent, they will go back to the source over and over again. If the source is your neighbor’s pool, dog bowl, horse trough, hose bibb, or fish pond you risk big-time neighbor problems.
What do honey bees do with all that water?
Honey bees use water for things besides drinking. On the hottest days, they smear water in thin sheets along the edges of brood comb. Next, the bees fan the water with their wings, causing it to evaporate. Because evaporation is a cooling process, the air and the brood nest can be maintained at a proper temperature. This busy bee process, called evaporative cooling, works just like an air conditioner except it’s way cuter.
On super hot days, the bees have to work extra hard to prevent their wax combs from deforming or melting into a puddle. All that cooling and fanning requires lots of water, perhaps several quarts a day. Talk about stress.
Besides all those “industrial uses,” bees also use water as we do. A good swig of water helps them digest their food and it allows them to secrete the royal jelly they need for rearing young’uns. A bee without water wouldn’t last long.
How honey bees carry water to the hive
It should come as no surprise that bees carry water in their honey stomach. This organ, also called a crop, is a stretchy organ than expands as it is filled and shrinks when it is emptied. Because bees have only one honey stomach, they can only carry water or nectar on a foraging trip—not both.
A water forager brings home multiple loads of water until the house bees signal they have enough. Only then can the water forager switch to collecting something else, such as nectar, resins, or pollen. Now that’s teamwork!
So, next time you see a thirsty bee buzzing around, remember that she’s not just looking for a quick sip. She’s got important work to do, and a reliable water source can make all the difference.
How honey bees find a wet bar
When we examine popular honey bee watering holes, we usually discover something that imparts an odor. That may be decomposing leaves, mucky moss-filled sludge, creepy crawlies such as worms, slithery larvae, or partially submerged plants. Even the essence of chlorinated or salt water pools tends to attract honey bees.
This business with swimming pools can be a problem because most people don’t like to share their expensive-to-own, exorbitant-to-maintain swimming pools with wee stinging insects. Go figure.
Tried and true drinking troughs for honey bees
When it comes to providing water for bees, safety should be your top priority (theirs, not yours). Bees tend to be lousy swimmers, so a poorly designed watering hole could spell disaster for your hardworking colony. Don’t be the unwitting cause of a bee-pocalypse!
- You can always fill a Boardman feeder with water at the hive entrance. This is a simple solution, but on hot days it may require many refills. If you allow it to go dry, your bees will start looking for an alternative source.
To train honey bees to find the water in a Boardman feeder, you can add some sugar the first time you fill it. After that, you can use plain water.
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- Outdoor water sources are trickier. Although honey bees can communicate distances very well, their navigational systems break down when things are too close to the hive. This means it’s best to set up a water source that’s at least 100 feet away.
- You can make water feeders from any kind of pan, bowl, or saucer. A shallow container is easier to set up but harder to keep filled. Adding floating objects will give bees an adequate place to land. You can try corks, popsicle sticks, polystyrene chunks, or even a piece of wood or bundle of sticks. Think of your raft as a tiny aircraft carrier with a short runway.
- Instead of floating objects, you can use heavy objects that poke through the surface such as stones, marbles, or bricks.
- Another option is a rain barrel or small pond containing aquatic plants such as lily pads or duckweed. The bees appreciate a good water feature just as much as we do.
- Use caution, however. If you use pet bowls, chicken watering devices, or hummingbird feeders, you may train your bees to search for these things.
- Little leaks can be simple and unexpectedly good water sources. My bees have always admired drip irrigation. They seek out the wet soil around the drippers and drink from that. Honey bees are also fond of leaky hose bibbs and nozzles, so be careful before you grab one.
Leave a breadcrumb trail (of sorts) to the watering hole
To lure your honey bees to the new watering station, there are a few tricks you can try. Some beekeepers like to entice their buzzy friends with sugar water, a tablespoon of chlorine bleach, or a drop of anise oil. Others prefer to add ground oyster shells or a small amount of salt to impart that irresistible seaside aroma.
Once the bees start frequenting your watering station, you can stop adding the optional extras. But don’t forget to keep the water filled. If you live in mosquito country, you are better off with water that does not stand. Instead, go drippy with irrigation heads or intermittent sprays.
Now you’re ready for bees
So there you have it, folks! With a little creativity and some attention to bee safety, you’ll have a happy, hydrated colony in no time. With any luck, your neighbors will be happy too. Cheers to the bees!
Be sure to let us know of any unique water devices that work for you.
Rusty
Honey Bee Suite
About Me
I backed my love of bee science with a bachelor’s degree in Agronomic Crops and a master’s in Environmental Studies. I write extensively about bees, including a current column in American Bee Journal and past columns in Two Million Blossoms and Bee Craft. I’ve endured multiple courses in melittology and made extensive identifications of North American bees for iNaturalist and other organizations. My master beekeeper certificate issued from U Montana. I’m also an English nerd. More here.
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I put out a BeeSmart feeder of water as soon as we stop getting overnight freezes, but the bees prefer the ditch that runs along my driveway, especially where the moss grows. That dries up in July and August, so they occasionally will use the water feeder, but even then I think they’re going across the road and a quarter mile to the swamp–oh, excuse me, the West [Redacted] River–for that smelly water instead.
I use bird baths filled with river rocks. There’s always a congregation of bees getting their water.
Suzy,
I like rocks, too. I use a flowerpot saucer filled with rocks I find while I’m walking. Some are very pretty.
I use 2 bird baths in my yard. They love it and they stay close to home and drink. But they are drinking and flying. Lol.
I have a fully functional water fountain running year-round. . . winter it has a heater.
Do the honey bees drink water during the winter when they go out to go to the bathroom? Good to know if they do cause I am planning to winter our hives in a garage with exit tubes for them to go outside but I wasn’t thinking about a water source for them in the winter time.
Paul,
Honey bees can’t spend a lot of time out in the cold when they go for a cleaning flight. They need to get out and back quickly before their body temperature drops. Not only would drinking take time, but it would chill them as well. So unless it is unseasonably warm, I would say they don’t drink outside in winter.
There is lots of moisture in a winter hive that condenses on the walls, frames, and lids. Many people think the winter bees live off the condensation: they give it off in respiration, drink it, give off more. There is also some water in the honey they eat. I’ve never given my bees extra water in winter, so they’re obviously prepared to get by. Still, if you want to give water inside the hive, I don’t see a problem with it. If it’s not right above the colony it will likely freeze, so there’s probably marginal benefit unless you keep it warm.
This is going to be our first year keeping bees. I have 7 nucs coming in the middle of May. I just bought a second-hand plastic pre-formed pond that is about 5′ x 3′ x 3′ with a ledge. My plan is to have a fountain going into it to help attract the bees and to put rocks and wood in it and moss etc to give them things to stand on while drinking. I hope if I cover a lot of the surface area with wood etc then it may not get too warm in the hot summer months or I’ll have to try to get some of our natural spring water on our property to drip into it somehow to keep it cooler. I’m also worried we have a swimming pool our family uses on the other side of our property from where we will be keeping the bees and I am worried about them drowning in it so we have a solar cover for it we will put on the water surface of it whenever the pool is not in use so they can’t drown in it. We also have a natural pond about 150 yards away from where the hives will be that is fed by an underground spring so I plan to clear an open path to that pond through our forest with hopes that the bees may find that water source too. It’s only a small pond that is about 12′ x 6′ so I will put a bunch of floating wood in it too so the bees can get out of it if they fall in. Any thoughts on any of this from you experienced beekeepers out there?
Paul,
Where I live we have a creek that’s more like a small river. We also have a small spring-fed creek, another creek that comes down from the state forest, and we have a lot of wetlands (what some people call swampland). Long story short it’s very wet. If you were a bee intent on drowning, there are lots of spots you could pick. That said, I just about never see drowning bees unless lots of bees begin to congregate at a certain place, become crowded, and start stepping on each other.
The only time I’ve seen them do that is when I accidentally left a pail of syrup without a lid on my driveway. It was during a nectar dearth and they got in there and started fighting. Bad thing. During the normal course of things, they won’t start drowning. If honey bees drowned every time they encountered water, we wouldn’t have any by now. Please don’t overthink this. Do set up the diversion from your pool, but don’t worry about the natural sources like the pond. You can keep an eye on them for a while and you will soon learn their habits.
Thank you for taking the time to reply so thoroughly Rusty! Ok that puts me more at ease about the water for winter and our water sources on our property. The bee keeping community is so great. Everyone helping each other. Yesterday I was at a bee keeping supply store and had a great time talking to the lady helping me for about an hour while I was there. Other customers coming in and everyone talking to each other. Great to see 🙂
I can tell you what didn’t work. I thought it was brilliant, but no. A cut-up watermelon that was firm enough to land and sweet.
They loved to occupy the flower cuttings I was propagating.
Paul C: curious about wintering them in a greenhouse or garage. The threat of bears has shown up twice.
Speaking as someone who didn’t follow this advice when it was given to me, and seriously regretted that:
The best time to put in an electric bear fence is BEFORE the bear attacks, not AFTER.
Debra,
Speaking as another person who waited too long, “The time to act is now.”
My neighbor bought a clean sponge and keeps it in a bowl filled with water. the bees really enjoy it apparently. She was trying to keep them out of her dog dish.
Shawn,
That’s an interesting idea. Thank you.