Toasting the Queen Trivia Quiz

Answer: Queen bee

The hive consists of the queen bee (normally just one), worker bees and drones. Her main role is to produce eggs, some say up to 2,000 per day. Without the queen to provide replacement bees, the hive will die. The drones are the male bees, who have no jobs in the hive. They have no pollen baskets for collecting, no sting to defend themselves nor glands for making wax. Their primary role is to mate with queens, after which they die. The worker bees do everything else, more or less. There is no king bee.

Answer: Circulate cooling air

If the hive gets too hot, you will see bees lined up at the hive entrance beating their wings to extract heat from the hive. They will also use evaporative cooling techniques, placing droplets of water in the hive. Poor ventilation in the hive and crowding can contribute to the hive getting too hot. Sometimes unoccupied bees will hang on the outside of the hive like a beard until the temperature inside drops.

During winter when the outside temperature drops too low, the bees will cluster together, vibrating their flight muscles to generate heat and keep the queen and the brood cells warm.

Answer: Pollen

Foraging bees collect nectar and pollen. The pollen can be formed into granules with a bit of nectar or honey to form bee pollen. Another source of protein is royal jelly, which includes pollen as an ingredient, however worker bees create it rather than eat it. Royal jelly is fed to all bee larvae for their first three days.

Answer: The food it eats

An enlarged queen cell is made to take the egg, which is a standard egg. After the first three days when all larvae are fed royal jelly, only those destined to be queen bees continue to be fed royal jelly. Royal jelly, a secretion coming from worker bees, contains a protein called royalactin which is responsible for the development of the morphological changes found in a queen bee. This is an example of you are what you eat.

Various things may trigger the creation of a new queen, typically the existing queen begins to fail or there are favourable conditions for swarming (when the old queen leaves the hive with a large part of the colony). The sudden death of the existing queen may lead also lead to the creation of an emergency queen, failing which, the colony will fail.

Answer: Tree resin

In the past propalis was considered to be used primarily for weatherproofing the hive and plugging draughts. Other uses are now believed to include helping with disease control in the hive and prevention of fungal and bacterial growth. Dead mice have been found in hives encased in propalis, effectively mummifying them, where it has not been practical to eject the carcases.

Answer: Where the desirable flowers are

How far a bee travels generally depends on what food is available where. Bees can be quite picky and may ignore low-nectar plants surrounding the hive in favour of the field of brassicas or clover meadow a kilometre away. The further it has to travel, the less it can collect and so the less honey that gets made. Generally, though, if they can find what they want locally, they will stay local.

Answer: Sugar

Sugar is typically given to the bees in dry form as granules or as a watery syrup. Feeding them honey is best. If you don't feed the bees, they will starve. Flowers, their source of nectar and pollen, are much less plentiful in winter. The weather also tends to be poorer and colder in winter, meaning the bees spend more time hanging about in a cluster in the hive doing their best to keep warm.

Answer: Kill the other virgin queens

Queen succession usually results in only one queen remaining in the hive. The first queen to emerge will seek to kill off the others by stinging them in their cells or, if another has emerged, in a fight. The queen bee's stinger is not barbed (unlike the worker bee's) and so she can sting repeatedly. The surviving virgin queen normally then goes on a mating flight before settling back in the hive to start egg production.

Answer: Towards dusk

Bees will be active in the day time during good weather, seeking out nectar and pollen. Towards dusk, most of the foraging bees will have returned to the hive and you still have some light to work with. Midnight tends to be a bit dark and most folk prefer to be in bed by then.

The same applies to dawn. If you had a cold and wet day, there would be few bees out foraging so that would be another possible time to move a hive.

Answer: To pacify the bees

There seem to be two main effects of smoke. The first is to mask the alarm pheromones given off by the guard bees or any bees hurt by opening the hive. Secondly, smoke suggests fire to the bees which prompts them to feed on honey prior to abandonment of the hive.

This reduces their ability to sting and focusses their minds on another task. A cool smoke is preferred to avoid toasting the queen, or any other bees for that matter.