Beginner's Bee Biology

2 Comments

1 min read

3 years ago

2 Comments

Dan says:
April 27, 2022 at 7:33 pm
Sorry if this is the wrong place for a question. I made some nucs and took frames of brood with nurse bees and then shook a couple more frames of nurse bees into the nuc. Going back to check them, it now looks like a few could use more bees. I have no idea which hives they came from. Would it be okay to shake in some nurse bees from any other hive or would it have to be from the original donor hive? They seem to be doing fine after several days. But they just look light.
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- Rusty says:
  April 28, 2022 at 10:16 am
  Dan,
  You can dump extra bees into hives from anywhere. You know, when producers make package bees, they dump hundreds of hives of bees into a big hopper and then fill the packages with a funnel. Then they add a queen in a cage. No one is related to anyone, but it all works out.
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The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. This book started zillions of people on their path to beekeeping. If you haven't read it, you should.

QueenSpotting: Meet the Remarkable Queen Bee and Discover the Drama at the Heart of the Hive by Hilary Kearney. You have to be a scrooge not to love this book. It even includes 48 queenspotting challenges.

The Bees in Your Backyard by Wilson & Carril. If you have any interest at all in the "other bees," you need this book. These are the bees we need to save.

Manuka: The biography of an extraordinary honey by Cliff van Eaton. The discovery of manuka honey and its medicinal properties.

Regardless of dictionaries, we have in entomology a rule for insect common names that can be followed. It says: If the insect is what the name implies, write the two words separately; otherwise run them together. Thus we have such names as house fly, blow fly, and robber fly contrasted with dragonfly, caddicefly, and butterfly, because the latter are not flies, just as an aphislion is not a lion and a silverfish is not a fish. The honey bee is an insect and is preeminently a bee; “honeybee” is equivalent to “Johnsmith.”

—From Anatomy of the Honey Bee by Robert E. Snodgrass

The non-native European Honey Bee is the state insect of:

Arkansas
Georgia
Kansas
Louisiana
Maine
Mississippi
Missouri
Nebraska
New Jersey
North Carolina
Oklahoma
South Dakota
Tennessee
Utah
Vermont
West Virginia
Wisconsin

Not one native bee is a state insect. The closest relative of a North American native bee to make the list is the Tarantula Hawk Wasp, the state insect of New Mexico.

Minnesota now has a state bee as well as a state insect. Bombus affinis, the Rusty-Patched Bumble Bee, has been so honored. Good work, Minnesota!

Connecticut’s state insect is the European “praying” mantis. Although they are beneficial insects, they are not native to North America.