January 21, 2020
How Do Honey Bees Spend the Winter?
Our guests have been asking how our honey bees are spending the winter. We thought that you might be curious as well.
They don’t fly south and they don’t hibernate–they have developed their own means for coping with the cold weather. In order to stay warm the bees gather in a central area of the hive and form what is known as a winter cluster. The worker bees gather around the queen. The queen is at the center of the cluster. Worker bees flutter their wings and shiver. This constant motion generates heat and keeps the inside of the hive warm. The worker bees shift from the outside of the cluster to the inside so they all have a chance to warm up. The temperature may range from 46 degrees at the outside of the cluster to 80 degrees at the inside. The cluster becomes more compact as the weather turns colder.
It takes a lot of honey to provide the energy for all of this fluttering and shivering. A hive of bees may consume 40 pounds of stored honey over the winter. On warm days, the bees may briefly fly out of the hive in order to eliminate body waste.
Hives can consume 40 pounds of honey over the winter.
Beekeepers Help Honey Bees Overwinter
The beekeepers’ role is to provide the best environment to help the bees succeed in overwintering. Jack and Sharon prepped the hives for winter this fall. The hives were robust with lots of stored honey for the winter. They cleared away weeds from the hives so that predators would not have a place to hide. They reduced the hive entrances so that mice and other small creatures cannot get into the hive during cold weather. To supplement the honey the bees stored, they made “candy boards” out of sugar and pollen substitute. The candy boards are placed in the top of the hive where it can easily be accessed by the bees.
They made sure the hives are adequately ventilated. Ventilation is important to keep the inside of the hive dry. The respiration of a hive full of bees contains quite a bit of moisture! Bees can weather dry cold, but wet cold can be deadly to them. Strong winds are common here, so they weighted down the outer covers of the hives.
We are hopeful that Queens Catherine and Sophia and their minions will overwinter in fine style. We hope to be able to offer you a taste of Tudor Mountain Honey in 2020!
April 9, 2018
Honeybees Benefit Tennessee Agriculture
Honeybees pollinate numerous crops. In Tennessee the value of crops benefiting from their pollination exceeds $119 million annually. Unfortunately, diseases and pests have caused annual losses of bees, in some years as many as 50%.
Two honeybee hives have been added to the Buckhorn Inn grounds.
We are pleased to be telling you that Buckhorn Inn is doing its part to protect and support these important pollinators. Thanks to our son Jack, two new hives have been put up and two colonies of bees installed. Queen Bee Elizabeth and her minions are on the left, while Queen Bee Victoria has her kingdom in the hive on the right. Our immediate goal is to increase the population of honeybees. But ultimately we hope to produce enough delicious honey to supply the Buckhorn Inn kitchen and to offer some to guests. We thought you might want to learn about honey bees along with us!
Facts about Honeybees
Honeybees produce honeycomb made up of hexagonal cells.
- 1. Honeybees have six legs, two compound eyes, three simple eyes, two pairs of wings, a nectar pouch, and a stomach. http://www.benefits-of-honey.com
- 2. Honeybees can fly as fast as 15 miles per hour and can travel as far as six miles. Their wings beat about 200 strokes per second.
- 3. In order to collect one kilogram of honey, a hive of bees will fly the equivalent of three orbits around the earth.
- 4. The queen bee can live up to five years. Her colony consists of 20,000 to 60,000 bees.
- A forager bee visits 50 to 100 flowers on each flight from the hive. She repeats these trips all day, averaging as many as 2,000 flowers per day.
- It takes six to eight pounds of honey ingested for bees to produce one pound of beeswax.
- The only bees that sting are the worker bees. They will only sting if they feel threatened, and will die once they sting.
- In the lifetime of a worker bee, she produces about 1/12th teaspoon of honey.
- Bees overwinter by clustering in their hives to keep the queen and themselves warm. They feed on the honey collected during warmer months and on syrup provided by the beekeeper.
- Forager bees find flowers then return to the hive and share detailed directions. In 1973 Karl von Frisch received the Nobel Prize in Medicine for cracking the code of the bees–the waggle dance.
Watch our blog and Facebook and Instagram posts for more information about our bees. We are proud members of the beekeeping associations of Sevier County and Tennessee. You may visit http://www.tnbeekeepers.org for information on the resources they offer.
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