Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
A SMOKER
Grateful for this handy tip, we the followed Billy over to the first hive, where we all
listened intently as Billy talked about the hierarchy inside the beehive. To me, hive life,
with its royal queen and her attendants, worker bees that do all the chores, and the lazy
drones, sounded just like a fairy tale.
L
IFE IN THE
H
IVE
A typical honeybee hive in the height of the summer will have a colony of approxim-
ately 80,000 bees, most of which are the female worker bees. Each hive has one queen,
who is the mother of all the bees in her hive and the only sexually developed female.
Alltheactivities ofthehiverevolvearoundthequeenandheregg-layingschedule.The
queen is the largest bee inside the hive and can be identified by her long, streamlined
abdomen. It is longer than the abdomens of the female worker bees and thinner than
those of the male drones. Often the beekeeper marks the queen, using a special water-
proof marker, with a colored dot on her thorax. This dot serves two purposes. First, it
makes locating the queen in a hive of 80,000 bees much easier, and second, the color
of the dot designates the year in which the queen was born. The color system, used by
beekeepers all over the world, is as follows:
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