50 Fun Facts About Beekeeping

A honey bee's sting releases isoamyl acetate as an alarm signal, a chemical that smells of which fruit?

Bananas get their sweet smell from isoamyl acetate, which is sold as banana oil. A stinging bee leaves the same chemical behind as a beacon that draws nestmates to sting the same spot.

Which California crop brings in over a million beehives each February, the largest managed pollination on Earth?

Almonds depend so heavily on honey bees that migratory beekeepers truck hives from across the United States to California's orchards for the bloom.

Which beehive invented by Stuart and Cedar Anderson raised over $12 million in crowdfunding by promising honey on tap?

Flow Hive frames hold plastic cells that split apart, so the honey drains out without anyone opening the box. The father-and-son campaign drew nearly 25,000 orders from more than 130 countries.

Which large moth squeaks when alarmed and mimics the scent of bees so it can raid hives for honey?

Death's-head hawkmoth adults carry a skull-shaped mark on the thorax and walk through hives unchallenged. The insect also appears in the film The Silence of the Lambs.

Which Virginian president recorded that Native Americans called the honey bee "the white man's fly"?

Thomas Jefferson pointed out that the honey bee was not native to North America, and that tribes read its arrival as a sign that settlers were not far behind.

After Elizabeth II died, the Royal Beekeeper performed which old custom at the Buckingham Palace hives?

Telling the bees means informing the hives of deaths, births and marriages in the keeper's household. Folklore warned that a colony left uninformed might stop making honey or fly away.

Smoke from a beekeeper's smoker triggers which response in a colony, thought to prepare it to flee a fire?

Gorging on honey readies a colony to abandon a burning nest with its stores on board. Smoke also masks the alarm pheromones that guard bees give off.

Where does a young honey bee queen mate with a dozen or more drones before starting to lay eggs?

In midair is the only place a queen mates. She flies to a spot where drones gather and may go back for several days running until she has all the sperm she needs.

Which syndrome, first reported in the US in 2006, sees worker bees vanish and leave a queen, food and brood behind?

Colony collapse disorder was nicknamed Mary Celeste syndrome in Britain, after the ghost ship found abandoned at sea. Affected beekeepers reported losing 30 to 90 percent of their hives.

Which nocturnal mammal scratches at a hive entrance and eats the guard bees that come out to investigate?

Skunk fur is thick enough to shrug off stings, which makes the animal one of the honey bee's main predators.

Which gap of 6 to 9 mm, which bees neither fill with comb nor seal with propolis, makes movable frames possible?

Bee space was applied by L. L. Langstroth in 1851 to frames that hang clear of the hive walls, so every comb could be lifted out without cutting it free.

A honey extractor, invented by Franz Hruschka in 1865, relies on what to empty combs without destroying them?

Centrifugal force flings the honey out while the wax comb stays intact in its frame, so the bees can refill it. Hruschka's older method had been to crush the comb.

Which hive grid has gaps of about 4 mm, wide enough for workers to pass but too narrow for drones?

Queen excluder bars sit about 4.2 mm apart, so the queen cannot climb up to lay eggs in the combs where honey is stored.

What do beekeepers call the wax sheet fitted into a frame for bees to build their honeycomb on?

Foundation was invented by the German Johannes Mehring in 1857, five years after the Langstroth hive was patented, and it is counted among the most important inventions in modern beekeeping.

L. L. Langstroth, the Yale graduate called the father of American beekeeping, worked in which profession?

Clergyman Langstroth was pastor of Congregational churches in Massachusetts before bees made his name. His hive, patented in 1852, is the basis of the standard design in much of the world.

Which country's beekeepers first detected Varroa destructor as late as 2022, near the port of Newcastle?

Australia answered by destroying hives inside eradication zones, including colonies at a bee research station. Investigators later suspected the mite had arrived before it was spotted.

Beekeepers shake a sample of bees in a jar with which kitchen ingredient to knock off and count varroa mites?

Powdered sugar dislodges the mites without killing the bees, which can go back to the hive afterward. An alcohol wash shakes off more mites but is lethal to the sample.

Which antiseptic chemical, familiar from first-aid kits, forms in honey through an enzyme that bees add to nectar?

Hydrogen peroxide is a byproduct of an enzyme the bees mix into nectar. Together with the acidity the same reaction creates, it helps to suppress bacterial growth in the finished honey.

A finished queen cell hanging from honeycomb is commonly compared in shape and texture to which shelled nut?

Peanut is the standard comparison for a queen cell, which points downward instead of lying flat like the other cells. Cells hung from the bottom of a frame are a sign of swarm preparations.

Where in the United States was beekeeping illegal until 2010, although residents kept rooftop hives anyway?

New York City lifted its ban in 2010 but required hives to be registered. Two years later only about half of the 400 colonies thought to be on its rooftops had been reported.

Which country gives its name to ligustica, likely the most commercially distributed of all honey bee subspecies?

Italy south of the Alps is where this yellow-banded bee sat out the last ice age. It adapts to most climates but does less well in the humid tropics.

Which Benedictine monk in Devon bred a famous hybrid honey bee after an epidemic wiped out most of his abbey's colonies?

Brother Adam was sent from Germany to Buckfast Abbey at the age of 11, and later traveled to Turkey in search of resistant bees to breed from.

Which brood disease reduces dead larvae to a ropy mass and is often controlled only by burning the infected colony?

American foulbrood spreads as spores that larvae swallow with their food in their first three days. Each dead larva then gives rise to millions more spores.

Which acid found in rhubarb leaves is among the naturally occurring compounds beekeepers use to kill varroa mites?

Oxalic acid makes up about 0.5 percent of a rhubarb leaf. It is one of the natural mite treatments, along with thymol and the beta acids in hops resin.

Which instrument do beekeepers use to check that honey's water content is low enough to keep it from fermenting?

Refractometer readings rest on how far the honey bends light, which depends on how much is dissolved in it. Beekeepers use the reading to judge whether a batch is dry enough to keep.

Which sugar is so abundant in honey from brassica crops that it crystallizes almost immediately after harvest?

Glucose comes out of solution as solid crystals, so the more of it a honey holds, the faster it sets. Honeys that are low in it, such as chestnut, stay liquid.

Honey supplies a colony's carbohydrates, but pollen is the hive's primary source of which nutrient?

Protein from stored pollen, called bee bread, is what nurse bees turn into food for the larvae, so a colony short of pollen has to cut back on brood.

What is the name for workers replacing an old, diseased or failing queen with a new one they raise themselves?

Supersedure begins when an aging queen's pheromone output fades. The replacement is generally raised in a cell built out from the face of a comb, not hung from its lower edge.

Which bees leave a clustered swarm to search for cavities, then report candidate nest sites back with dances?

Scouts dance more excitedly for a better cavity, and the swarm commits once enough of them have gathered at a single site.

Which traditional hive, a basket of coiled straw set open-end-down, cannot be opened to inspect the combs for disease?

Skep baskets have housed bees for some 2,000 years, but taking the honey was difficult and often destroyed the entire colony.

In the queen-marking mnemonic "Will You Raise Good Bees", which paint color does the last word stand for?

Blue closes a five-color cycle of white, yellow, red, green and blue. The dot on a queen's thorax tells a breeder the year she hatched, and so whether she is due to be replaced.

Which honey from swamp trees along Florida's lower Apalachicola River is prized because it does not crystallize?

Tupelo honey comes from the Ogeechee tupelo, a tree that has been planted across thousands of hectares of bee farms around the swamps where it grows wild.

Which honey, for which beekeepers move hives to the moors in late summer, is a thixotropic jelly until it is stirred?

Heather honey sets back into a jelly after stirring, which makes it so hard to get out of the comb that it is often sold in the comb.

Which fourth-century bishop of Milan became a patron saint of beekeepers thanks to a legend about a swarm at his cradle?

Ambrose is said to have had a swarm settle on his face as a baby, leaving a drop of honey behind. His father took it as a sign of the honeyed tongue to come.

Which film about a North Macedonian wild beekeeper was Oscar-nominated as both documentary and international feature?

Honeyland follows Hatidže Muratova, who tends wild colonies in a remote mountain village. It was the first documentary to be nominated in both Oscar categories.

In which 1997 film did Peter Fonda earn a Best Actor Oscar nomination as a widowed Florida beekeeper?

Ulee's Gold won Fonda a Golden Globe. Its title refers both to the honey its hero produces and to hidden money stolen by his son.

In which modern country did archaeologists at Tel Rehov uncover the oldest apiary ever found, some 3,000 years old?

Israel's Tel Rehov dig turned up 30 intact hives and the remains of 100 to 200 more, all destroyed by fire, along with traces of the bees themselves.

Which pest native to sub-Saharan Africa has larvae that tunnel through combs and cause the stored honey to ferment?

Small hive beetle larvae feed and defecate as they tunnel, which discolors and spoils the honey. The pest was first discovered in the United States in 1996 and later reached Hawaii.

Which invasive predator, established in Europe first in France, hovers outside beehives to hawk for returning foragers?

Asian hornet raids succeed in Europe because western honey bees, unlike the predator's usual prey, never evolved the habit of darting past a hovering hunter.

Which term describes the farming of stingless bees, practiced on a large scale by the Maya long before Columbus?

Meliponiculture touched the social, economic and religious life of the Maya. Keeping honey bees of the genus Apis goes by the related name apiculture.

Varroa mites clinging to adult honey bees feed on which organ, crucial for immunity and pesticide detoxification?

Fat body tissue stores a bee's energy reserves and helps regulate its hormones, so mite feeding leaves both larvae and adults measurably lighter and weaker.

Which microsporidian parasite invades the gut of adult honey bees and is linked with dysentery in confined colonies?

Nosema spores must be swallowed to start an infection, and freezing a contaminated comb will not kill them. Dysentery sets in when bees are kept from the cleansing flights on which they void.

Which organ lets a honey bee queen lay fertilized eggs for years after the brief mating period of her youth?

Spermatheca capacity runs to as many as 6 million sperm, gathered from many drones. A queen releases them selectively as each egg passes down her oviduct.

Which collective name covers the "tooting" of free virgin queens and the "quacking" of rivals inside their cells?

Piping is thought to be a battle cry that announces a queen's willingness to fight. It is heard most often when a hive holds more than one queen.

In the Doolittle method of queen rearing, what is the name for moving day-old larvae into artificial cell cups?

Grafting is the heart of the most commonly used way of raising queens. The larvae a beekeeper moves must be no more than 24 hours old.

Which frameless, single-story beehive comes in well-known styles nicknamed "Kenyan" and "Tanzanian"?

Top-bar hive combs hang from a row of removable bars that doubles as the roof. The "Kenyan" version was actually developed in Canada.

Which blind Swiss naturalist studied honey bees through the eyes of his servant Burnens and invented the leaf hive?

François Huber's leaf hive of 1789 held combs that could be examined like the pages of a book. Langstroth obtained one years before he designed his own hive.

Which son of Apollo and the huntress Cyrene was the Greek culture hero credited with discovering beekeeping?

Aristaeus was credited with a string of rural skills besides bees, and the people of Boeotia honored him as the pastoral Apollo.

Which Mohawk Valley beekeeper invented the modern bee smoker by attaching a bellows to a tin burner?

Moses Quinby also wrote Mysteries of Bee-Keeping Explained. His smoker of 1873 was the basis for the improved design that a Michigan beekeeper named Bingham later patented.

Which brood disease is caused by the fungus Ascosphaera apis, which rarely kills a colony but cuts its honey yield?

Chalkbrood's fungus was one of the first insect pathogens to have its genome sequenced. Colonies usually survive an infection but are left more open to other pests and diseases.