Wild bees build nests in trees, logs, hedges, cliffs or walls. Removing their honey destroys their nest.
Over the centuries, people have designed reusable nests – ‘hives’ – that enable harvesting of honey without bothering the bees too much.
Worker bees fill the hive with vertical, double-sided sheets of wax honeycomb. Each side consists of hexagonal cells, most of which are 5–7mm/1.5–¼in across.
These receive worker eggs and store the colony’s food: honey, pollen and bee bread, a mixture of pollen, nectar, saliva and microorganisms. Slightly larger cells receive drone eggs, and very large, thimble-shaped ones receive queen eggs.
Many beekeepers supply honeycomb starter sheets so that bees don’t need to make so much wax and, as a result, have more energy to make honey. These sheets encourage workers to build relatively few drone cells, whereas honeycomb built entirely by bees has more drone cells. This triggers the queen to lay more drone eggs, and it’s said that having more drones makes a colony happier.
Honey is the bees’ main source of carbohydrate, pollen their main source of protein. But both contain many other vital nutrients
A bee colony – or family – consists of:
- A queen bee – the only fertile female. She lays eggs, keeps the colony happy, is the longest bee and lives 18 months on average, although she can survive up to six years.
- Up to 30,000-60,000 worker bees – small infertile females that groom and feed other bees, maintain the hive, collect nectar, pollen, propolis and water, and make honey. A spring or summer born worker lives six weeks at most, an autumn born one six months.
- Several hundreds or thousands of drones – fertile males that are shorter and stouter than the queen, have large eyes but no sting, wax glands or pollen baskets, and live eight weeks at most.
Only a few of the 25,000 or so species of bee make honey, and most of these produce only tiny amounts.
Honeybees inhabit every continent except Antarctica. Apis melllifera is the most common type in Europe, the US, Canada and Australia. Honeybees live in large colonies and store a lot of honey. In contrast, the bumblebee (Bombus bombus) lives in a small colony that stores a tablespoon at most.
Honeybee varieties differ in honey-making ability, honeycomb colour and building, hive-care, immunity, tendency to swarm (form a new colony), multiplication, appetite and character.
The most popular are Italians (brown-and-yellow-striped), Carniolans (black or grey) and Caucasians (grey).
Thanks to migration and importation, though, many honeybees are mongrels today.
From here on I’ll generally call honeybees simply ‘bees’.
Honeybees change nectar from flowers into honey, to make food for themselves.
The average hive stores 9–14kg / 20–30lb of honey by the end of the year. This represents a huge joint effort because a single worker bee produces only half a teaspoon of honey in her whole life. It takes nectar collections from around 2.6 million flowers, involving bee flights totaling around 88,000km / 55,000 miles, to produce just 450g / 1lb of honey.
A guy and his manager go down to the docks. The manager is betting every dockworker he sees that his guy can make love to 100 women in a row, without pausing, and satisfy them all.
Bets are made, and they agree that they’ll meet the next day. The next day, 100 women are lined up along the dock. The guy drops his pants and starts.
True to his word, he moves from one to the next, satisfying each one without pausing: 1.. 2.. 3.. on and on he goes: 49.. 50.. 51.. He slows down somewhat: 83.... 84.... 85.... but he is still moving from one to the next, and the women are still satisfied: 97............ 98............. 99................ and before he can get to the last woman, he has a heart attack and dies.
The manager scratches his head in puzzlement and says, “I don’t understand it! It went perfectly well at practice this morning!”
A masked man goes into a sperm bank, points a gun at the woman behind the counter, and says, “Open the safe.”
She says, “This isn’t a real bank; it’s a sperm bank.”
He says, “Open the safe or I’ll shoot.”
She opens the safe, and he says, “Now take one of the bottles and drink it.”
After she opens the bottle and drinks it, he takes off his mask and the woman realizes the robber is her husband.
He says, “Now you see? It’s not so difficult, is it?”
Two young lovers go up to the mountains for a romantic winter vacation. When they get there, the guy goes out to chop some wood. When he gets back, he says, “Honey, my hands are freezing!”
She says, “Well, put them here between my thighs and that will warm them up.”
After lunch he goes back out to chop some more wood and comes back and says again, “Man! My hands are really freezing!”
She says again, “Well, put them here between my thighs and warm them up.”
He does, and again that warms him up.
After dinner, he goes out one more time to chop some wood to get them through the night. When he returns, he says again, “Honey, my hands are really, really freezing!”
She looks at him and says, “For crying out loud, don’t your ears ever get cold?”
