A colony of honey bees is a superorganism! For the survival of the colony the bees work together. Consequently, no one bee can survive by itself.

The colony has one Queen ( who lays all the eggs),  and approximately 3,000 drones (males) and 50-60,000 female worker bees at the peak of summer. In the Autumn, the colony reduces to around 5-7,000 workers to keep it ‘ticking over’ through the winter. The remaining drones are killed.

Honey bees feed themselves and their larvae by collecting pollen, nectar and water. As a result,  they pollinate fruit, flowers, vegetables and crops which puts the food on our plate.

Honey

Liquid Gold

Bees take nectar, which is a sweet sticky substance exuded by most flowers. The bees mix it with enzymes from glands in their mouths. The nectar/enzyme mix is stored in hexagonal wax honeycomb. The bees reduce the water content to around 17% and the mixture becomes honey. The honey is capped in cells, until the bees need it,  with a thin layer of wax to seal it.

Honey bees are special in that they over winter as a colony, unlike wasps and bumblebees . The colony does not hibernate in the winter but stays active and clusters together to stay warm. A colony need to collect a lot of food in the summer to survive the winter. A hive only needs 30-40 lb of honey to survive an average winter, although the bees are capable of collecting much more. The extra honey we collect from the hives is what we enjoy on our toast in the morning!

The Importance of Bees

Bees are pollinators and are vital to our food chain. But for bees, one third of the food we eat would not be available. In the UK about 70 crops are dependent on, or benefit from, visits from bees. In addition, bees pollinate the flowers of many plants which become part of the feed of farm animals. The economic value of honey bees and bumblebees as pollinators of commercial crops in the UK has been estimated at around £400-£600 million per year.