The strength and productivity of a bee colony depends on the queen. The larger it is, the better conditions are created for the productivity of the uterus. Bees of a strong colony intensively feed the queen; she lays a lot of eggs when there are enough comb cells prepared by bees in the nest. At low temperatures and in great heat, as well as with a lack of food, egg laying decreases, or even stops altogether.
The queen begins to lay eggs at the end of winter, but not many (several dozen per day). In early April, after the cleansing flight, the rate of egg laying increases, and the bees feed the brood more energetically. Soon the number of young bees increases, but at the same time the old ones that have overwintered die.

Bees live like this:

Subsequently, mainly in May, the rate of growth of young bees increases even more. A period of proportional family growth begins. The rate of family growth at this time depends on the number of bees raised in the fall, on how the family overwintered, on the volume of the nest, the temperature in it and the availability of food in the hive - honey and beebread.

It is believed that a worker bee that has overwintered feeds on average one larva, and a young bee feeds four. The number of bees that are born in strong colonies significantly exceeds the mortality of those that overwinter, and such colonies grow quickly.
A sharp increase in egg laying occurs with warming, when pollen enters the nest. At the end of May or June, the number of eggs in the nest reaches its maximum.
Then comes a period of fading growth (according to G.F. Taranov). It is at this time that some bee colonies begin to prepare for swarming.

During the main feeding season (June - July), the queens of strong families reduce the laying of eggs, many comb cells are occupied with nectar, honey and beebread.

How do bees live? during the swarm period

In a family preparing for swarming, qualitative changes occur. This is, first of all, an increase in the number of young bees. Such bees are able to rebuild a new nest with great energy and work in a new place.

At the beginning of preparation for swarming, the queen, which laid fertilized eggs, begins to lay unfertilized ones. Bees build many so-called bowls - the foundations of future queen cells. When a colony transitions from a working state to a swarming state, the queen lays fertilized eggs in some of these bowls, and the family feeds the queen larvae, while simultaneously rebuilding the queen cells.

After a couple of days, a swarm emerges. The queen also flies out with the swarm, which 3-5 days before sharply reduces the laying of eggs.
It happens that the old queen is not able to fly and is lost after leaving the hive. Then the swarming bees return to the hive and come out with the swarm after a couple of days (mostly after 7-9) with young infertile queens.
Several tens of thousands of swarming bees, emerging from the hive, circle in the air for some time, and then sit on a tree or bush, creating a club. The queen and a number of drones also sit here. The beekeeper collects the swarm into a hive, and subsequently a new full-fledged family is formed from it.

If the beekeeper does not collect the swarm in a timely manner, then it is removed and flies to a settlement site pre-selected by the scout bees. There they build a nest, vigorously display flight activity, and bring food to the family.

Even in the open air

bees can live without a hive

Swarming does not occur in the complete absence of bribes. Only in isolated cases do so-called hungry swarms emerge. There are no swarms even with a strong harvest, because all the worker bees are busy collecting honey. Intense heat and stuffiness in the nest with a small bribe accelerates swarming.

Research shows that every family necessarily begins to prepare for swarming if the temperature in the nest is too high and it is difficult for the bees to reduce it to normal. Even if strong families are helped in time and avoid overheating of the nest, they will not swarm and will produce significantly more products.
Strong colonies of bees have different propensities to swarm. Those of them that produce less production are always the most swarming.
During the warm season, worker bees perform various tasks in and outside the hive. They are the ones who feed and care for the brood: they clean the cells in preparation for the queen to lay eggs; maintain the temperature in the nest and proper air humidity; build honeycombs; feed the uterus; They guard the entrance, and also look for nectar and pollen in nature and bring water.

Work in the hive is performed mainly by young, flightless bees. And they guard the entrance, look for food and bring it to the hive.
When feeding brood and secreting wax, bees must consume pollen and bee bread.
Nectar can be replaced with sugar syrup if necessary. No complete substitutes for protein feed (bread bread) have been found.

A very important feature of honey bees is that they collect food not only for daily consumption, but also in reserve.
Bees become flightable at 10-14 days of age. Cool weather and lack of bribes delay this process. Only very young bees - one to two days old - do not do any work, because they are still very weak.
An important job of bees is feeding the brood and queen. There is no clear distribution of work. Often, on the same day, a bee feeds the larvae, takes part in caring for the queen, cleaning cells and building combs.
Each bee tries to get involved in the work that it comes across in the nest, if it is able to do it. For example, one bee starts cleaning the cell and after a while leaves the work; the second continues; after her comes the third, and the fourth finishes.

Flight bees sometimes fly for a bribe for 4-6 km, but under such pressure they quickly work out. Many flying bees die from bad weather that catches them on the road. The food consumption for long-distance flights can be so great that the amount of honey in the hive almost does not increase. Apiaries must be located so that bees fly for a bribe in the summer no further than 1.5 km, and in the spring - 0.5 km.

How do bees live?, they live well when there is a good place for an apiary

Watch on my channel about honey plants near the apiary

In the presence of a bribe, bees fly willingly over such a distance, making 10-15 flights daily. They transfer the nectar they bring to young bees for processing and assembly into cells.
Bees collect sticky substances, mainly from tree buds. They use this material to produce propolis.
If necessary, the bees also bring water.

Working bees signal to other individuals of their family about the found source of honey (distance to it and direction) with the help of peculiar movements on the honeycomb, which are called “dancing”, they are easy to observe during honey, because some bees do not stop “dancing” even on the frame taken out of the hive.
I. O. Levchenko discovered that during “dancing” bees create sounds with the movements of their wings at a frequency of about 300 vibrations per second.
The appearance of fresh nectar and pollen in the nest and the intense smell of flowers also encourage bees to increase their flights for a bribe.

Unlike most insects, honey bees do not freeze for the winter, but actively produce the level of heat necessary for life. The warmth of one bee is completely insufficient to fight the winter cold. But many thousands of bees, gathering in a dense mass, sum up their energy, and the special structure of the club ensures the preservation of heat, as a result of which the bee colony can withstand even severe frosts. Consequently, the social way of life of bees has developed for them a very special way of wintering, in which they remain active.

Starts in summer. By processing nectar and turning it into honey, bees create a highly nutritious, concentrated meal. They store honey reserves in the upper part of the nest so that they can be conveniently used in winter conditions. Bees seal their honey reserves with impenetrable wax caps, which prevent both the liquefaction of honey in humid air and its thickening and crystallization in dry air. acquired the ability not to excrete excrement, despite systematic feeding. They very fully absorb the sugars of honey, and the folded structure of the large hind intestine allows them to significantly increase its volume and retain the contents until spring flight.

In the process of historical development, the bee family has acquired many instincts aimed at economical consumption of honey in the autumn-winter period. These include the expulsion of drones after honey collection. First, they drive them from the honeycombs to the walls and bottom of the hive. Here the drones become weak from hunger, the bees drag them outside, where they die.

In preparation for winter, bees, which are mixed with wax, carefully seal the cracks in the hive and often reduce the entrance. They leave only a few round holes in it.

Swarms always settle in the hollows of living trees. ceiling, leaving the walls free. Through them, moisture penetrates into the tree in winter and is carried away by liquid currents. This significantly protects the bees’ home from the accumulation of excess moisture formed during the bees’ metabolic process during the winter.

It also has physiological differences from spring and summer. Reserve nitrogenous substances, fat and glycogen are deposited in the bee's body, and the type of metabolism changes. If in summer bees the main processes of heat formation are carried out under the influence of oxidase enzymes, which decompose sugars using atmospheric oxygen, then in winter bees, metabolic processes increase under the influence of a group of dehydrogenase enzymes, which use oxygen associated with fat accumulated in the bee’s body since autumn. In winter bees, a thick layer of fatty body is formed under the outer cover and between the internal organs, which does not develop to the same extent in summer bees.

The content of free water in body cells decreases; Water goes from a free state to a bound state. This process is especially active in insects that freeze in winter, due to which they return to active life in the spring. Free water, freezing, destroys the cell structure, and the insect dies; in a bound state, it does not freeze, the body cells are preserved, and a very slow metabolism continues in them due to the accumulation of fat and other substances in winter.

Bees are in “warm” conditions in winter; their body temperature, even on the periphery of the club, does not fall below 6°C.

For a long time, beekeepers were interested in the idea of ​​whether it was possible to keep bees in a state of suspended animation in winter, placing them in large refrigerators with a temperature slightly below 0°C. However, studies have shown that it is impossible to overwinter bees without consuming honey.

In autumn, egg laying and brood rearing decrease and then stop. Families with old queens stop raising offspring earlier, with young queens - later. As the weather gets colder, the bees gradually gather in the middle of the nest. The decrease in temperature is first felt by the insects on the outer combs, and then they rush towards the warmth, that is, to the middle combs, where the bulk of the bees are concentrated and the queen is located. This is how it starts. Initially, it is loose and unstable - it forms at night and disintegrates during the day as the air temperature rises.

If the temperature rises to 12-15°C, the bees fly around and are freed from excrement. However, with the onset of a steady cooling, a permanent club is formed, which persists throughout the cold period.

In tree hollows, the winter club of bees is always located on the border between honeycombs (above) and empty ones (below). The bulk of the bees are placed on empty honeycombs, forming a “bed” of the club. The upper part of the comb always covers the honey comb, which allows the bees to have food within the heated part of the club. Such placement of the club guarantees the possibility of feeding in conditions where a bee, detached from the club, inevitably dies in cold weather.

As the food is consumed, the club slowly moves upward, towards the honey. This movement is quite natural. On whatever honeycombs the club met in the fall, they will be on the same ones in the spring, only higher. Over the winter, a family consumes 8-10 kg of honey, and if the club is located on 6-8 honeycombs, then the bees will consume approximately 1.5 kg of honey on each comb. Therefore, there is a rule: each honeycomb left in the nest for the winter must contain at least 2 kg of honey.

The winter club has a clearly defined structure - an outer crust and an inner core. The bees that make up the crust sit motionless, pressed tightly against one another. Here they are placed not only in the streets, but also in empty cells. As a result of this, most of the crust consists of a mass of bees in the form of a dense continuous shell, separated only by thin cell walls. The crust reliably retains the heat generated by the bees in the middle of the club.

The thickness of the crust depends on the external temperature, when it decreases the club becomes denser: more bees enter the cells, the crust becomes thicker and denser.

The thickness of the crust is not the same everywhere: it becomes thinner near the entrance - the bees are placed more loosely here, as a result of which air can penetrate inside the club. The same loosened place is present in the upper part of the club. The degree of loosening is regulated by bees, which ensures the necessary level of ventilation inside the club. Especially many bees in the cells are located on the sides and in the lower part. Older bees predominate in the crust.

The bee remains in the crust as long as there is a supply of honey in its crop. When the supply of honey is exhausted, the bee “dives” into the thickness of the crust, emerges from it and climbs up the honeycomb to the supply of honey, where it fills the goiter. In a winter club, bees do not transfer honey to each other - each bee takes it from the cell itself. The honey within the crust is pre-sealed by the bees, and it, being hygroscopic, is somewhat liquefied due to the moist air collecting in the upper part of the club. The drier the air, the more cells the bees keep open. Having filled the goiter with honey, the bee adheres to the inner layer of the crust, which remains part of it for a long time. Bees sit quietly in their cells, with a low metabolic rate.

The core of the club consists mainly of physiologically young bees. They are placed relatively freely and can move around the cells. The heat comes mainly from the bees housed in the core of the club. It is formed due to the honey they eat and is released during mechanical movements (twitching of the wings). In cold weather, a peculiar noise is usually heard from the hive - this is the result of the warming movements of many thousands of bees in the core of the club. Inside the club, the bees maintain a relatively high temperature: in a small area in the middle it reaches 28...32°C (thermal center). From the thermal center upward, the temperature decreases gradually, while downward it decreases more sharply (due to the influence of the influx of fresh cold air). In the thickness of the crust there is 6...10°C.

The volume of the club changes during the winter, following changes in external temperature. During cold snaps it contracts, during relative warming it expands and at the same time moves after the cells freed from honey. Thanks to this pulsation, the heat inside the club is maintained not so much by an increase in heat generation, but rather by a decrease in heat losses. Thus, when the external temperature decreases by 5°C, the diameter of the club decreases by 12%. This is enough to maintain the initial heat transfer. Thanks to this reaction to low temperatures, bees can tolerate cold weather without a significant increase in food consumption.

Honeycombs with printed honey soften sharp temperature fluctuations in the hive. When cooling, warmer honeycombs slowly radiate heat, and when warming, on the contrary, absorbing heat, they contribute to a slow increase in temperature. Therefore, with a sharp change in external conditions, the bee colony is able to gradually adapt to the new conditions.

The temperature in the center of the club changes little throughout the winter - usually no more than 1...2°C per day. However, in general it grows by spring. By the end of February, the temperature in the center of the club reaches 32...33°C, which encourages the queen to lay eggs. A bee colony of average strength spends 20-25 ghoney per day in the first half of winter. When brood appears in colonies, food consumption approximately doubles.

Honey and beebread, without excreting feces. It concentrates in their hindgut, which greatly increases in size by spring. When wintering indoors, the weight of the hindgut with feces increases in December to 18 mg, in January to 20, in February to 24, in March to 32, and in April, before flight, to 34-36 mg. Bees behave normally, retaining up to 40 mg of feces. If something bothers them in winter (for example, mice) or they feed on poor-quality honey (crystallized or mixed with honeydew), then the normal filling of the hindgut is disrupted, and the bees can suffer from diarrhea, causing weakening and death of colonies.

Bees fly around very early in the spring. In a forest at an altitude of 6-8 m, the air temperature in the sun reaches 12°C much faster than below, on the ground, where heat is absorbed by melting snow for a long time. It is interesting that in the old days, beekeepers-hunters looked for hollows with bees in the forests by the many spots of their feces in the snow under a hollow tree. Only after freeing themselves from winter feces do the bees begin, having for this purpose reserves of honey and bee bread in their nests.

G.F.TARANOV,
professor
magazine "Beekeeping" No. 10, 2013

Bees are used to living with an abundance of food. That’s why they always try to bring home and prepare as much honey as possible. In the hollows of centuries-old linden and pine trees, where bees lived, hunters sometimes found 20 pounds of honey.

It would last the family for several years.

Bees are able to somehow determine how much honey they have. If it is not enough, then they begin to save it, eat poorly, become exhausted, which is why they work worse and die sooner. The whole family becomes weaker. This means that bees should always have a lot of honey. This is perhaps the main condition in beekeeping, and without it it is impossible to conduct business successfully.

What does pollen give to bees? In addition to nectar, bees readily collect pollen. It’s like a second course for them. On hazel and willow catkins, on dandelion and sunflower, on poppy flowers, bees literally bathe in pollen, trying to get as dirty as possible in it. Motes of dust sprinkle them from head to toe, crowding between the hairs that thickly cover their body. A bee's hairs are not round, but flat, like the feathers of a bird. They are just adapted to sweeping pollen from flowers. To prevent pollen from getting lost on the way home, the bee uses its brushes, which are on its legs, like combs, to comb dust particles from its body and fill its baskets, specially designed for carrying pollen, with them.

In spring and summer, tens of thousands of bees are busy collecting pollen. On warm days, they literally carry it home in “cartloads”. A bee can carry more than 20 milligrams of pollen. From morning to night, bees fall at the entrances and, having rested a little, hastily go to the hives, whose baskets are filled to the brim with pollen of various colors - white, yellow, brown, grey, blue, red and even black. This means that many types of plants bloom and give the bees this gift in abundance.

Flower pollen, although very nutritious and rich in proteins and vitamins, is not yet ready food for bees. This is a kind of flour from which they prepare bread in their home. Folding it into cells, they add a drop of honey to it, as if kneading it to get a dough. This pollen dough begins to ferment in the cells. The result is bee bread, which is called beebread. The aroma of bee bread actually resembles the smell of just baked warm rye bread. And they have something in common in taste.

Bee bread, like honey, is very necessary for bees. Without it, they cannot prepare food for the larvae, the colony will stop growing and begin to weaken. The construction bees become exhausted and stop building honeycombs, and the forager bees quickly get tired of the work. Drones usually eat a lot of beebread. An abundance of beebread in the nest is necessary. This is why bees are so eager to find and collect pollen. During the year, a family requires 30 - 35 kilograms of pollen.

Why do bees collect water? Bees satisfy their need for water, without which no creature on Earth can live, with honey, which contains up to 20 percent water. This amount is quite enough for them both in summer and winter.

However, you can see how bees drink water at wells, near springs, and in warm spots near rivers. There are especially many of them at watering places in spring or on hot days in summer. Bees don't just drink, they take water as nectar and carry it to the nest. It turned out that they really need water to prepare the gruel for the larvae. The mushy nutrient mixture, which includes beebread, honey, and bee jelly, must be diluted a little more, made thinner so that it is more easily absorbed by young, tender and rapidly growing larvae. And the more brood there is in the nest, the more water is required and the more the family of water-carrying bees secretes.

True, when there is a bribe and the bees collect a lot of nectar, the need for water is satisfied with liquid nectar. Then you won’t see bees at the watering hole.

In hot weather, in order to somehow reduce the temperature in the nest and maintain the necessary humidity in it, the bees sprinkle the brought water over the honeycombs and hang them in droplets in the cells. Evaporating, it creates coolness.

Therefore, in an apiary it is necessary to have a drinking bowl. A drinking tank with a tap is installed in a sunny place, and a board with grooves is placed at an angle. The tap is opened so that water drips from it and flows quietly along the recesses of the board. The water becomes warm from the sun.

Bees quickly discover the drinking bowl and willingly use it even in cool weather. They stop flying far for water and do not get lost, as often happens when there is wind and in the cold spring season. Beekeepers even say that in spring water is more expensive for bees than honey.

What equipment does a beekeeper need? Working in an apiary requires special tools. In addition to the smoker, which can be called the main equipment of a beekeeper, you need a beekeeping chisel. This is a small L-shaped metal plate with flared ends. It serves the beekeeper as a trowel for a builder. Without it, it is impossible to perform any operation in the hive - neither separate the housings, nor remove the frame from the nest, nor scrape off excess pieces of wax or propolis.

The set of apiary equipment includes a portable box, a knife for unsealing honeycombs, a honey extractor to extract honey from the honeycombs, a wax grinder, an electric frame stretcher, and a honeycomb. All this can be purchased at a beekeeping store.

Bees are a part of nature. Honey bees are a living part of nature. Their life and behavior are determined by the weather and the condition of honey plants. The weather changes and the bees behave differently. In summer it is different than in winter, and when there are a lot of flowering plants, it is different than in the dry season. It’s as if nature switches a family of bees, like a TV, from one program to another.

In early spring, with the awakening of nature, when the days noticeably increase and the sun begins to shine brighter and longer, the bees begin to pay more attention to the queen, feed her better, clean the cells so that she lays eggs in them, and increase the temperature in the nest.

With the appearance of eggs and larvae, the temperature in the nest rises to 35°C, the bees become mobile, and consume more honey and bee bread. Abundant nutrition contributes to the formation of special bee jelly, which they feed to the larvae.

Every day there is more and more brood in the nest. And three weeks after the eggs appear, young bees will begin to be born. If there is a lot of food in the nest at this time, everything goes well and no intervention from the beekeeper is required.

And then the day comes when the bees, after a long winter, can go free. They spent the entire winter in the hives, escaping the cold.

As soon as the hive is warmed up by the sun and the air becomes warmer, first one bee will look out of the entrance, followed by another, a third, take a few timid steps, stop, blinded by the rays of the bright spring sun, turn around and leisurely take off, without taking their eyes off their home. At first, slowly and heavily, as if out of habit, they make several small turns and loops near the hive, trying to remember its location, then they fly further away, rise higher, and make wider circles. It’s as if tightly stretched strings are ringing in the air. More and more bees come out of the hive, first two or three at a time, and then as many as tens. In just a few minutes, tens of thousands of bees will be circling in the air. This is their first spring flight.

During the flight, bees cleanse their intestines. After all, they did not release him for 6-7 winter months. They do this in flight, trying to fly away from their nest. Bees that have spent the winter in unfavorable conditions especially need to be freed from feces.

The spring flight lasts only about half an hour, but it seems to renew the bees’ body. They become cheerful and active. During the flight, you can see bees that have already managed to find the first spring flowers and brought droplets of fragrant nectar and lumps of pollen. And other flying bees carefully pull out from the nest dead bees, crumbs and crystals of honey that fell on the floor of the hive during winter. They began to clean and put their home in order. The pilots now have watchful sentries. The families began working life.

Bees have to spend a lot of time and effort to remove garbage and dead bees.

16.12.2016 0

There are fewer and fewer wild bees left in nature. Most of them have already been domesticated and live with people in apiary conditions. We will tell you further how wild bees differ from domestic bees, where they live, how they winter, and how to get rid of them if necessary.

Benefits for nature

There are fewer and fewer wild bees and their species are listed in the Red Book. There are about 20 thousand of their varieties and about half of them are species not domesticated by humans. Scientists cannot even fully study them, since it is difficult to do so. In nature, such a bee most often lives in forest conditions. There are earthen ones, etc.

But no matter what species they belong to, they all perform a very important role - they pollinate plants. Considering that the wild honey plant is much more hardworking and hardy than the domestic one, and can easily tolerate any weather conditions, it can pollinate plants much more actively. It is thanks to these workers that pollination of all forest plants occurs.

In addition, wild honey bees create honey with a unique composition. It is considered the most valuable of all bee products and can cure almost any modern human disease. True, it is very difficult to find such honey, because due to deforestation and the destruction of bee nests, their numbers are sharply decreasing. Today, wild honey bees can be found for the most part only in special reserves.

The most famous is in Bashkiria - Shulgan-Tash, where they simultaneously protect this endangered species of insects and extract honey from wild bees. This kind of beekeeping is called beekeeping. In order for the bee colony to have a chance to survive during the winter, people take only a third of their honey once a year.

Features of the habitat of wild insects

Such wild and capricious representatives of nature require the following living conditions:

1. Sufficient space for overflights.
2. Having a private living space.
3. A favorable body of water nearby.
4. The presence of a large number of honey plants.

Forests are the favorite habitat of wild workers. And yet, as forests are cut down, favorable conditions for them become less and less. Therefore, it is not surprising that sometimes wild bees even settle near human habitation.

As for the living space itself, almost anything can be suitable for them - a hollow tree, a crevice in a rock or ground, the roof of a house, an attic or a garage. These can also be specially created bags of leaves and dry grass that are hung from something. Earthen species even dig a passage in the ground and build a special housing, where the queen is placed at the farthest and most protected point.

The issue of wintering for such forest inhabitants is not as pressing as for their domestic counterparts, for whom people come up with various rooms and insulation. A wild bee can withstand frost even at minus 50 degrees! They are very hardy and not picky.

The main condition for wintering is sufficient availability of honey in the hive. And if a person takes all the honey from them or more than a third of the total amount collected, then the bee family has no chance of survival - by spring they will all die. Some species of wild bees that live high in the mountains descend to the lowlands for the winter and hibernate among the trees.

But if you try to catch a wild swarm and populate it in your apiary, then most likely they will die very quickly, since these will be completely uncomfortable conditions for them. Therefore, an attempt to get wild honey by moving insects closer to a human home will be unsuccessful.

Differences between a wild worker and a domestic one

Since these insects still belong to the same species category, they have a lot in common:

• both domestic and wild bee families live in a close-knit, organized group;
• Each bee in the hive has its own responsibilities. Typically these are worker bees, drones, queen bees and honey bees;
• to store honey they create honeycombs;
• Everyone's main body parts are the same. The differences are only in some small details;
• use the sting for defense.

Here are some differences between a wild specimen and a domestic one:

1. A wild representative of the bee family is more aggressive and is capable of attacking a person or animal even at the slightest extra sound, movement or smell that she does not like.
2. Undomesticated insects are more industrious and much more active in collecting nectar and making honey. As a result, they stock more for the winter.
3. The body of wild honey bees is smaller than that of domestic bees - reaching 2 - 3 cm in length. But there are also major representatives. The largest wild bee spotted in Nepal.
4. Some representatives have a “fur” covering and a protective shell on the chest.
5. They have better immunity, practically do not get sick and are able to survive even cold temperatures of -50 degrees.
6. The color of such workers is gray, lacking the characteristic yellow color. And some varieties don’t even have clear stripes on their bodies.

Benefits of wild honey

Honey from wild bees is a special type of healing delicacy. Among all other varieties of honey, wild honey is considered the most useful and of the highest quality. And all thanks to its rich composition:

• the presence of all vitamins and minerals necessary for the human body. Particularly predominant are vitamins A and C, iodine and folic acid;
• in addition to the honey itself, it also contains partially beebread and wax, which only complements its value;
• Due to the fact that wild honey is collected only once a year, already in the autumn, it has time to fully ripen. Therefore, the saturation of nutrients in it reaches its maximum.

It is also important to take into account that such honey is always collected only by hand, trying not to damage the honeycombs or disrupt the vital activity of wild bees. And therefore, beneficial substances are also better preserved in it. As a result, we get the maximum value of the honey product.

Wild honey is used not only in folk medicine. He is also respected and appreciated by doctors from all fields of medicine. With the help of wild honey you can cure almost all diseases known to man today. The most common problems for which this delicacy is successfully used:

1. Improves appetite and improves metabolism.
2. Treat problems of the gastrointestinal tract.
3. Its effect on the bronchi and lungs is especially valuable. With its help you can cure bronchitis, pneumonia, flu and various respiratory infections.
4. Normalize the activity of the heart and capillaries. It can even alleviate the condition of coronary heart disease.
5. Diseases of the kidneys and other internal organs.
6. Honey can reduce muscle pain and cure joint diseases.
7. Reduces inflammation, treats sore throat.

The main characteristics of real wild honey:

• its color is darker and more saturated;
• the taste is tart;
• consistency is thick, viscous;
• The aroma is rich, rich and has a slight smoky scent.

Dangerous wild bees

Insects living in natural conditions, not tamed by humans, can be very dangerous. They are used to protecting their family and their home from any enemy. Wild bees are more aggressive and can become dangerous to humans. If wild bees have settled near your house or on your summer cottage, you should be careful, as this is a rather unpleasant neighborhood.

Firstly, the noise made by a large number of bees will disturb you.

Secondly, the danger from their bites is many times greater than from domestic insects. Even a person who is not allergic to them can become ill from the sting of one bee. If a person is bitten by several wild bees at once, this can end very sadly. Their poison is much more concentrated than that of pets, and therefore many times more dangerous.

If you are stung by a wild bee, you should call an ambulance or do the following:

1. Remove the sting.
2. Treat the wound with alcohol.
3. In order to remove the poison, the wound must be thoroughly rinsed with salt water.
4. After all procedures, apply a cold compress or a piece of ice.
5. Drink plenty of fluids that contain ascorbic acid. It could be tea with lemon or rosehip.

Video: honey from wild bees.

If wild bees bother you

To avoid unpleasant consequences from proximity to wild bees, it is better to remove them from the site. It is highly not recommended to destroy them using chemicals, as this will harm the environment, the bees themselves, as well as all the plants that they manage to pollinate. Try not to destroy the bee family, since there are very few of them left in nature, but they are extremely useful for plants.

We all know that a bee, having bitten a person, leaves its sting in his body and soon dies. This happens because human skin squeezes the insect's sting too tightly, preventing it from pulling it out. But few people have thought about how long a bee lives without attacking a person or being killed. In fact, nectar foragers, which are the most numerous, live for about 35 days. But there are other types of bees, let's figure it out.

worker bee

A bee colony is a whole community, an organism that includes several thousand worker bees, hundreds of drones and one single queen. Absolutely every family has its own character, way of life, way of collecting honey. Only together can they defend themselves from ill-wishers, reproduce, and collect nectar and pollen.

Reference. Each member of the bee family occupies its own level and performs its own functions to provide the entire family with high living comfort.

The queen is the only individual of the bee colony that lays offspring. This is the largest bee: its body length is about 2 - 2.5 cm. In one day, the queen lays from a thousand to two thousand eggs, that is, about 150,000 over the whole season.

All family members take care of the uterus itself. They feed and clean her.

Queen surrounded by worker bees

Worker bees are female individuals that have underdeveloped genitals. They are not that large in size: their body length ranges from 1.2 to 1.4 centimeters. This is the most numerous species. In the summer, there are about 60,000 - 80,000 worker bees in one family. In autumn and spring - only about 20,000 - 30,000. It is not for nothing that worker bees received this name. They are in charge of collecting nectar and pollen, building honeycombs, feeding the offspring and maintaining cleanliness in the hive.

Drones are male individuals whose main task is to mate with the queen. They are medium in size: 1.6 - 1.7 cm in length, and their number in one family reaches several hundred, or even thousands. Drones live with families only in the summer. At this time, workers take care of them and feed them. But at the end of the summer period, the maintenance of their life ceases, and the drones, starved to death, are thrown out of the hive.

What factors influence life expectancy

The following factors can affect the longevity of a bee:

• feeding, raising and caring for the brood (the more offspring the bees need to go out and feed, the less likely they will live themselves);
• active daily work (collecting nectar and pollen, caring for larvae and the queen, building honeycombs);
• various diseases;
• lack of nutrients.

Infected bee

In addition, the lifespan of a bee may depend on the time when it was born:

1. Bees born in spring live no more than 38 days. At the same time, April bees feed their offspring most intensively and, as a result, live less.
2. Summer individuals live for about a month. And if comfortable living conditions are met and there is no great need for feeding, then even for several months.
3. Bee representatives born in the fall can easily survive until next spring. The less the need to feed the brood, the longer they will live.

How long does a worker bee live?

To find the answer to the question of how many days a worker bee lives, you first need to know what time of year it was born. Based on the information that we examined in the previous question, we can draw the following conclusion: in the absence of other factors, autumn bees are long-lived compared to others. But do not forget that the lifespan of a given insect directly depends on its lifestyle. Feeding a large number of larvae, daily collection of nectar, or any diseases can shorten the life of an insect to 25 days.

How long does a drone live?

Drones are born in each hive at the end of spring and after two weeks they are ready to mate. Factors that affect the lives of worker bees do not apply to them. Once the drone releases the seed, it dies. Also, some individuals may die during the struggle to fertilize the uterus. The lives of the rest are in the paws of worker bees, because they are the ones who feed them. As soon as the need for drones disappears, they are thrown out of the hive, thereby dooming them to death.

There are times when there is no queen in the hive or it is infertile. Then, at the end of the summer period, the worker bees leave several drones so that they can fertilize the new queen in time.

Lifespan of the uterus

The queen, as the only female individual capable of reproducing, lives much longer than worker bees and drones. In good conditions, its life expectancy can be 5 - 6 years. She does not fly to collect nectar and pollen, does not feed the growing offspring, and does not clean the hive. On the contrary, other family members carefully feed her with specially produced royal jelly, clean up after her, clean and protect her. This explains such a long life of the uterus.

But at the same time, it should be valuable to the hive: it should produce large brood and actively reproduce. When the queen begins to lay fewer eggs, or stops laying them altogether, the workers replace her with a new, younger queen. And the former queen, having lost full guardianship, will live much shorter.

Conclusion

It is worth noting that weather and climatic conditions also affect the lifespan of bees. For example, a cold winter and low food supplies will not allow bees to live a happy, long life.

Also, if you take a large amount of honey from the apiary, the bees have to work harder and harder to collect nectar. And this harms their health and life.