The Sweet Rewards of Entering a Honey Show
If you’re a beekeeper, hobbyist, or simply a lover of honey, participating in a honey show can be an incredibly
A harsh reality of the honeybees’ lives is that everyone has a role to play in the colony. The queen is responsible for laying eggs and keeping the colony together, the workers do all the jobs inside and outside the hive: building comb, looking after the queen and the brood, cleaning, guarding the hive, collecting pollen, water and nectar, and converting that nectar into honey.
The drones have a single responsibility: to mate with queens in Spring and Summer. As they don’t do any other jobs, when summer draws to a close they become an unnecessary burden, extra mouths to feed without any direct benefit to the colony. All the mating is over, and there’s no need for drones until the next spring.
At this point, the worker bees start pushing (literally!) the drones out of the colony, as we can see in the video.
This might seem harsh to us, but it is normal behaviour, and essential for the long term wellbeing and survival of the colony. The honey stored for winter is a precious resource and the drones would not live into next year anyway. Their average lifespan is around eight weeks, while a worker bee can live up to 5 months in winter and 5-6 weeks in summer.
So, let’s spare a thought for the drones!
If you’re a beekeeper, hobbyist, or simply a lover of honey, participating in a honey show can be an incredibly
My ancestor Friedrich August Hannemann was responsible for introducing Apis mellifera to Brazil in 1867, when he emigrated from Germany