Apis Mellifera
Introduction
It was perhaps just lock-down boredom, but I became interested in honey bees (Apis mellifera) after reading about the Flow Hive. This is an invention created by an Australia father/son duo that enables extraction of honey directly from a hive — similar to turning on a tap.
If you’ve never thought about it, honey is usually extracted from honeycomb filled frames using centrifugal extractors. Instead of removing frames from a beehive, the Flow Hive allows in situ extraction of the honey. The ability to extract honey directly from the hive is not new (US2223561, circa 1940), however the inventors of the Flow Hive came up with a novel solution that could be brought to the masses.
Whilst the Flow Hive certainly makes extracting honey easier for the backyard keeper, extracting honey is just a small part of maintaining a beehive.
Diving Right In
“So, without too much thought I bought a Flow Hive and eagerly awaited its arrival. I had it together and had painted within a few days — I was all set….except for the bees.”
A hive is constructed from a couple of basic components — frames and hive boxes.
Frames are stored within hive boxes and give the bees something on which to build their comb. Frames may be wax-lined to help the bees build straight comb within the frame.
A brood box is a place where eggs are laid and new bees are raised.
A honey super (superstructure hive box) is placed on top of an existing box and is used to allow bees to store “just” honey. Typically the queen is prevented from entering a super by use of a queen excluder — a mesh that prevents the queen bee passing.
Hive boxes come in standard sizes and can typically hold up to ten frames.
After a winter shutdown, a beehive population explodes in spring — when the flowers are in bloom and the temperatures are rising. This is when existing hives are split and a typical time of year to start a new hive.
If a hive becomes overcrowded, bees are likely to swarm. This is where the queen will depart with a large group of bees in search of a new home. The remaining bees will raise a new queen by feeding a strict diet of “royal jelly” to selected larva. Swarming can be prevented by splitting a hive or enlarging the current hive. Once you have one hive, it often grows to more than one!
“Jump forward a few months to late spring, when the flowers are out I find myself literally holding a package of around 10k bees in my living room. I’ve read as much as I can, I watched dozens of videos about ‘installing’ a package of bees all with seemingly different techniques, and the guys at the bee shop said ‘nah, don’t use smoke when you install them’, and I wonder what I’ve got myself into.”
Installing Bees
Bees will usually come in a “nuc” (nucleus) or a “package”. A nuc is just like a mini hive and allows for the frames to be transferred directly into a new hive. A package is literally a box containing circa 10k bees. Each of these will come with a mated queen bee (ready to lay eggs). The package holds the queen bee in a cage of her own which she can only escape by eating her way out (or others eating their way in). This prevents the queen from bolting during the first few days — and gives the other bees time to settle into their new hive.
Smoke is often used during hive inspections as it hides alarm pheromones and calms the bees.
“I’m standing at the hive with the package of bees (suit and gloves on). The first task is to remove the queen cage and place it into the hive — this was a relatively simple process.
The next step is to extract the circa 10k bees through a hole about the size of my fist for them to fit through. I’ve been told to ‘just bang ’em out’; — which seems a bit brutal for someone who doesn’t handle bees very often! Luckily this doesn’t result in 10k killer bees flying around my head and amazingly most of the bees just fall into the hive, seemingly oblivious to the situation. Phew!
After a couple of minutes treating the bees like a sack of potatoes, the bulk of them have been knocked into the hive and I leave the package at the entrance for any stragglers to find their way to the hive (attracted by the queen). The bees will take a few hours to get their bearings and settle down, so I take a breather.”
Creating a new hive
Once bees are installed into a new hive, the population drops rapidly in the first weeks as there is no comb on which to lay eggs and raise new bees. It’s a critical time for the worker bees to start building comb into which the queen can lay her eggs. The comb is also used to store honey and pollen reserves. A bee must consume about eight grams of honey to make just one gram of wax!
To help build comb and reduce stress, sugar syrup is typically fed to package installs for the first few weeks, but advice varies depending on the region and time of year.
Why do bees build hexagonal shaped structures? A two thousand year old conjecture that honeycomb is the best way to divide a surface into regions of equal area with the least total perimeter was recently, in 1999, proven. However, exactly how the bees achieve this shape is open for debate.
You can expect the population to start growing after about three weeks when the first eggs will start to hatch. A queen can lay fertilised eggs or unfertilised eggs. The hive has the ability to raise the necessary bee types to ensure that balance within the hive is maintained.
Drone bees are the only males in the hive, hatching from unfertilised eggs laid in larger cells by the mated queen.
Worker bees are female bees that hatch from fertilised eggs and typically adopt a role (foragers, scouts, undertakers, guards, …) which may change during the course of their lives
As bees settle into their new hive, one of the most fascinating aspects is the way in which scout bees communicate the quality of nearby food and water sources and how the hive mind determines which is ultimately the best. A dance of all things (the waggle dance) is used to indicate the direction, distance and quality of such sources upon returning to the hive.
“ After the bees settle down and in the ensuing weeks, I’m feeding the bees a litre of sugar syrup a day. Within the first five days (and umpteen ounces of sugar syrup), the bees had almost completely drawn out comb in the middle frame. Within two to three weeks, there were eggs, shortly followed by new bees. Two months later and the brood box is completely full. I’m checking the hive every 2 weeks now and preparing to add the super anytime.
Early on I notice some beetles in the hive, so I reach out to a local specialist who suggests using traps to curb their activities.”
Pests
Moths and beetles can cause serious issues within a hive, but maintaining a strong population is key to keeping these pests at bay. This means not expanding your hive too early and making sure there’s always enough population to cover drawn frames. There are also deterrents and traps that can be used to help keep the population of these critters under control. Other mites and pests exist, but vary depending on location.
“I’ve taken the leap and added on a super in mid summer. The bees take a few days before they start exploring their expanded home. And a few more weeks before they start completing the (mostly) pre-formed comb of the Flow Hive frames and storing honey. … As winter draws near, the bees have slowed down. They come out later in the day, but at this time are still actively foraging. The winters in Sydney are typically mild. Thankfully, the pests are also slowing down. On the right days, I can smell the honey from the back door which is ~15 metres away from the hive! And that’s the journey so far…”
…but what about the honey?
It usually takes a year for a new hive to produce enough honey so that it can be collected. After all, you’re essentially stealing the bees’ food reserves. As bees store honey into the comb, they’ll fan their wings to help evaporate excess water from the honey. Bees will cap honeycomb cells when the water content gets down to around 18% — at this point the honey is considered stable (will not ferment) and it’s ready for harvesting.
The Flow Hive has a pre-constructed plastic honeycomb structure — part of the mechanism in which the Flow Hive uses to operate. And what’s particularly neat (or lucky) about the Flow Hive is that after the honey is extracted, the bees realise the honey is gone, so they uncap the honeycomb cells and refill the stores.
There’s so much more to beekeeping and bees, from the tools used, how to inspect hives — a little too much to detail for here, but reach out if you’re interested to know more. However, I’m not an expert, I’m just excited about these extraordinary little fellas!