Oh, Honey | The Importance of Honeybees

About the Honeybee
The honeybee is one of about 20,000 species of bees. As the name suggests, these bees are responsible for supplying the world with delicious honey. Honeybees live together in hives. The queen bee produces worker bees and drones (male bees). The worker bees are the pollinators and honey makers.

Interestingly, all honeybees in a hive are female. The queen bee stores sperm from drones, enough to last her lifespan. According to Connie Moore, master beekeeper and founder of Honey Hive Farms located in Peoria, Arizona; the queen bee is responsible for choosing the sex of her eggs.

“The queen starts laying eggs in the honeycomb, and when she does that, she can decide if it will be a boy or a girl. Girl eggs are produced if the queen adds a drop of sperm and fertilizes it. If the egg is not fertilized, it hatches to be a drone,” she says.

The hive’s workings are fascinating. The worker bees choose their next queen. Eggs designed to become queens are placed in special cells within the hive. They are then fed what is called royal jelly, a substance produced by the salivary glands of the workers. If bees are not fed a diet solely of royal jelly, they will grow into worker bees. The new queen will replace the old one, and the cycle restarts.

According to Moore, queen bees have an average lifespan of two to three years. Meanwhile, worker bees live for about two to six weeks in the summer and 20 weeks in the winter.
Honeybees can be aggressive if they feel threatened. However, European honeybees often give you warning signs before they sting you, ultimately leading to their death.

“If European honeybees are displeased with you, first they’ll buzz in your face, and if you’re not paying enough attention, they will bounce off your face. If you still ignore them, that’s when they will sting. But, you can outrun a honeybee,” Moore jokes. “Be sure to run inside near a light source; they will gravitate to that.”

The Importance of Honeybees
Other than producing honey, honeybees are responsible for pollinating about 80 percent of crops in the U.S. To put it in perspective, one in three bites of food you eat is pollinated by bees, although Moore argues that number can be even greater.

“Honeybees are an invasive species. They came here when European settlers did,” Moore explains. “Before honeybees, our main form of pollination was through the wind. However, now, our main resource for pollinating our crops and plants is through bees. They are essential to how our food system works, so we would like to keep them here.”

Honeybees make more than 12 trips daily from their hive to plants to pollinate. A single honeybee pollinates about 5,000 flowers per day. With an average hive containing about 35,000 worker bees, and if every bee left to pollinate, more than 175,000,000 plants and flowers would be pollinated daily.

Given these hefty statistics, the repercussions of the extinction of bees would be devastating.
“If our honeybees go away, it drastically changes our food system,” Moore says. “The first change would be the halt in honey production, but the second impact is that the plants that require pollination would die off immediately. Our food system would change overnight if honeybees went extinct. People don’t realize how many pollinators we need.”

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According to Moore, honeybees are struggling for several reasons. “First and foremost, there is a loss of habitat and food they can access. The other part is that agricultural farms only plant one type of crop, which restricts the variety of nutrients the bees can consume. Another issue is the chemicals in the environment. Not all herbicides and pesticides kill the bees, a common misconception. However, the chemicals that do are very effective and have a hefty negative impact.”

The Rise of Beekeeping
Raising awareness and education about the importance of bees and their role in our ecosystem has increased interest in beekeeping. This includes allowing people to maintain a hive or colony of bees in their backyard.

One of the significant benefits of beekeeping is the supply of natural honey. However, Moore says that the benefits of beekeeping go deeper than just the product. “Beekeepers tend to live a little longer. Some people say it’s from the bees’ vibrations. For me, it’s relaxing. My bees are like my pets; they know me by sight and smell.”

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Beekeeping is more challenging than it may seem. Multiple factors can impact the health of your bees. One in particular is the Vorrora Disruptor Mite.

“Like dogs and cats, honeybees can encounter pests, too. The Vorroa Disruptor Mite is like a tick for honeybees. While honeybee colonies survive with some of these mites, the mites themselves negatively impact honeybees’ immune system.”

Moore recommends watching a YouTube video first if you want to give beekeeping a go. However, it is important to note that beekeeping looks much different in Arizona than in the Midwest.

“Every beekeeper does things a little differently,” Moore says. “Find a mentor that fits your personality because, in my experience, there is no set way to do things as a beekeeper. The basics are the same, but how you manage bees varies depending on the person.”

Moore offers introductory courses on beekeeping at her farm, Honey Hive Farms. For more information, please visit her website at honeyhivefarms.com.