Q: How and why do bees make honey?
A: There are close to 1,000 identified species of bees in Colorado, but only honey bees make substantial amounts of honey (bumble beesalso make a little bit). To make honey, honey bees lap up flower nectar, return to theirhive, spit the nectar into an empty honeycomb cell, and then dehydrate the nectar withtheir tongues and wings, turning it into honey. They create honey to use as a food sourcethrough the winter, since adult honey bees remain active in the hive all winter.

Q: How and why do bees make hives?
A: Very few species of bees make hives - mostlive in the ground, twigs, or dead wood. And, most bee species actually live solitary lives,with a single mother creating and provisioning pollen and nectar for her babies! The highlysocial honey bees make honeycomb hives – female workers secrete wax from in betweentheir abdominal segments, building up beeswax into cells where the queen lays eggs andworkers create honey.

Q: Do they hibernate?
A: Not really.  They form a tight cluster when it gets cold and as long as it is a large enough hive they are able to keep themselves warm enough to survive temperatures as cold as -35° celsius (-31° F). A good hive can manage our Manitoba winters with relative ease surviving 20 or more days when the daytime high temperatures are colder than -20 Celsius and nights dropping to -35 or colder.  The bees quickly flex their wing muscles, like flying without moving their wings, to build up their body heat which they share as a cluster and the bees on the outside slowly change places with the bees on the inside of the cluster so they can warm up, often bringing feed with them. The queen stays near the middle of the cluster with the brood.

Q: How warm do they keep the hive?
A: A hives internal temperature is maintained by the bees at approximately 34° Celsius (93.5° Fahrenheit) for most of the year and even during the winter the inside of their tight cluster is maintained at near this temperature as the small amount of brood (baby bees; eggs, larvae and pupae) needs to keep warm to develop.

Q: How much honey does a honey bee make?
A: A single worker bee will visit up to a few thousand flowers per day and produces around 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey in its life time while a colony together may visit up to 225 000 flowers per day and can produce 200+ pounds of honey in a single season, some have been recorded as producing around 600 pounds (272 kg) of honey ini one season. That’s a lot of flowers visited.

Q: Scared of a honey bee stinging you?
A: Female honey bees (including all worker bees)can sting – as they sting, their barbed stingers are left behind in your skin, tearing offthe end of their abdomen, killing the honey bees. Male honey bees do not have stingersbecause stingers are derived from the egg-laying apparatus, which males do not have.Honey bees will typically only sting if they feel their hive is threatened. If a honey bee seemsinterested in you, try slowly backing away.

Q: What is the biggest difference between a bee and a yellow jacket?
A: While honey bees can attack when provoked, wasps are naturally and more aggressive predators. Honey bees are hairy, while wasps usually have smooth and shiny skin.