Saturday, August 4, 2018

National Pollinator Week

On June 23, I had the privilege of speaking for National Pollinator Week about the role of pollinators - especially our very own Glory Bees! We gathered in the church and spoke about fun pollination facts, why pollinators are important, the difference between honey bees and a variety of native pollinators, and what people can do to help in their own yards. Then we took a trip out to the hive to meet the bees in person.

They were very cooperative and all was well in the hive. We went through all ten frames in the top box, and there was A LOT of honey. A few brave souls stepped up and held the frame full of honey and were surprised at how heavy it was! Our bees did well socking it away during the honey flow, so they should be well provisioned in the coming months. There were a few frames completely full of honey, and each of the other frames had an arch of honey at the top, with brood (baby bees) under. There was a lot of capped brood (the final stage before a bee emerges), as well as larva. We saw some drone brood and potentially one supersedure cell, which says the colony may feel they need a new queen. We did not see the queen this time, but also did not investigate the bottom hive box.

I will be going into the hive again in the next couple of weeks to check the level of Varroa mites, a parasite that is very detrimental in bee colonies, by doing a sugar shatke. More on that soon!

I will leave you with some our "Fun Facts" we talked about on Saturday.

*If you cut an apple across the middle (from top to bottom) there is a "star" in the middle. If each of the 5 pockets has 2 seeds in it, the apple blossom was completely pollinated by bees!

*A honeybee visits between 50-100 flowers during one collection flight. In order to produce one pound of honey, 2 million flowers must be visited. A hive of bees must fly 55,000 miles to produce one pound of honey. One bee colony can produce 60-100 pounds of honey per year. A single bee only produces about 1/12 - 1/2 of a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime.




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