Honey Bees

Latin Name: Apis mellifera

Months of Activity: January - December

Unlike most insects, honey bees remain active throughout the winter with honey produced from the nectar of flowers providing plenty of food during the colder months. Honey bees are social insects and create elaborate nests, or hives, containing up to 20,000 individuals during the summer months.

When threatened, honey bees will swarm out and attack with their stingers to drive the enemy away, but generally as they forage around your garden, they are quite harmless and will only sting if they accidently become caught in clothing.

Appearance

• A honey bee worker is about 12mm long and is brown and amber in colour.
• A honey bee drone is about 12mm long and is brown and amber in colour.
• A honey bee queen can grow up to 20mm long and is brown and amber in colour.

Lifecycle

In the UK, honey bees are able to survive winter as a colony, and the queen begins egg laying in mid to late winter to prepare for spring. She is the only fertile female, and deposits all the eggs from which the other bees are produced.

Except a brief mating period when she may make several flights to mate with drones, or if she leaves in later life with a swarm to establish a new colony, the queen rarely leaves the hive after the larvae have become full grown bees.

The queen deposits each egg in a cell prepared by the worker bees. The egg hatches into a small larva which is fed by nurse bees (worker bees who maintain the interior of the colony). After about a week, the larva is sealed up in its cell by the nurse bees and begins the pupal stage. After another week, it will emerge an adult bee.

Pest Control

Effective control of the honey bee often involves the removal of the bee nest in the first instance, followed by an intensive program of integrated pest management. Over recent years, the honey bee has become a threatened species, and so pest control methods should only be carried out by a qualified pest control technician.

Latest News about Honey Bees

Tolerating Wasps
When I say hornets, how many of you think tolerance? Brace yourselves, those who fear and loathe hornets. I'm about to urge a policy of general tolerance for hornets and wasps. So why should these feisty fliers be tolerated? Mainly because they're s... [more]

The Sad Strange Fate Of The Honey Bee
When was the problem identified? In the closing months of 2006, when thousands of American beehives were found to be almost entirely devoid of bees ñ victims of a mysterious malady known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). A study across 15 different... [more]

Bees and Honey
A couple from Peterborough were pretty sure the sound coming from inside the wall of their master bathroom was bees. "I heard the buzzing, louder than my electric toothbrush. I turned it off and then I heard the drones." When the callout was made, t... [more]

Control Garden Pests Organically
Knowing how to prevent and treat pest problems is fundamental to maximising the rewards you can reap from your gardening efforts. When faced with a pest problem, gardeners – new ones in particular – often reach for toxic insecticides. It... [more]

Sticky Sticky Sticky
Use of glue boards to trap stinging insects is really catching on at homes and sensitive accounts such as schools and churches. For most insect accounts, the best time to treat is in the evening, when most of the colony have finished their daily for... [more]

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