Honey bees are social insects which means they live as a group sharing responsibilities in the hive and caring for the brood. There are 3 different types of bees in the hive: the worker, the drone and the queen. . In the summer there may be 40,000 to 60,000 bees living in a colony. Most of the bees in the hive are worker bees. They are female bees that do all of the work in the hive except lay eggs. Some of their duties include: caring for the young, housecleaning, building comb, carrying out the dead, guarding the hive entrance, foraging, processing the nectar, warming the hive in winter, cooling it in the summer and tending to the queen. Drones are the male bees whose only duty is to mate with a queen (after mating they die). Drones do no work and are evicted from the hive in the fall. There is one queen in the colony and her job is to lay eggs to keep the colony going. Since worker bees literally wear themselves out during the summer and only live perhaps 40 days, it is important to the colony for the queen to be a good egg layer.

What Bees Collect when they are Foraging. When adult bees forage, they may be out collecting nectar or pollen from flowers. The nectar is converted into honey for food and the pollen is used in their diet for protein. Adult bees will also collect water. They need water to air condition the hive during the hot summer months. Droplets of water are placed in the hive, then the bees will stand in a line fanning their wings creating air currents that evaporate the water cooling the hive. Bees also collect propolis, a sticky gooey substance from trees that they use as "bee glue". It is used to seal cracks in the hive.

Swarming. When a colony becomes too crowded, it may swarm. You may see a large mass of bees gather and hang from a tree limb. When bees swarm, they hang in this cluster looking for a good home (which may be miles away). They may stay there a few minutes, hours or days while scout bees are out looking for the perfect home. If you see a swarm of bees, do not disturb it. Call a local beekeeper, your local fire department or in RI call the URI hotline number and they will give you the name and number of a beekeeper who will come to your house and remove it. When bees swarm they are very docile, since they have no home to defend.

Bees in Crisis. During the past several years you may noticed a drastic reduction in the number of bees pollinating your gardens. This is due to two mites which have been introduced to this country - the tracheal mite and the varroa mite. Several years ago, most of the bees in this state including managed bees and wild bees living in trees were wiped out by the mites. Only with intensive management are beekeepers able to keep their hives alive.

What do Bees do in the Winter? Bees do not hibernate. In the fall, the queen stops laying eggs and the bees cluster in a ball and sort of shiver to keep warm. On a warm winter day bees will fly. On cold days and nights, they stay clustered together. The hive population declines sharply during the winter months. Sometime probably in the middle of January, the queen will start laying a few eggs. Worker bees will keep that brood warm - over 90 degrees even if the temperature outside is minus 10 degrees.

I got Stung by a Bee! If you get stung by a honeybee, gently flick the stinger out of your skin with your fingernail. Most of the time however, people do NOT get stung by honeybees unless they tamper with a hive. Honeybees do not sting when they are out foraging. When a honeybee stings you, it dies, so they usually only sting when the colony's existence is threatened. Most people get stung by wasps, hornets and yellow jackets. These insects are very different from honeybees in that they can sting you multiple times. If you see a big gray paper nest hanging from a tree, they are probably bald faced hornets. If you get stung by a nest of bees in the ground, they are probably yellow jackets. Honeybees build their nests from wax. The other insects mentioned build nests that look like paper and except for a queen overwintering in leaf litter, they die off in the winter and will build a new nest in the spring. They do not reuse the old nest.

For quesitons about bees, contact bmencucci@cox.net