Putting the bee girls to bed
I like to encourage people of all ages to help pollinators, the insects, birds and mammals that help flowering plants reproduce. People are more willing to help if they have a chance to get to know their local pollinators. To that end, I like to invite people to visit the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Pollinatarium to observe honey bees, Apis mellifera, in action. The bees spend their summer lives behind glass at the Pollinatarium.
Honey bees, Apis mellifera, search for nectar on flowers in the pollinator garden outside the Pollinatarium. A small passageway from the observation hive to the outdoors allows the bees to access the floral resources.
Photo by Fred Zwicky
In the warmer months, small groups of visitors come in to see the bees. The hive is small, containing only eight deep honeycomb-laden frames, which are laid out in a single layer and sandwiched between sheets of glass so observers can find the queen and see what all the worker girls are doing. They can also look for boy bees, called drones. There aren’t any drones in the hive this time of year, however; it’s fall, and the bees are gearing up for winter.
Program manager Lesley Deem prepares a smoker outside the Pollinatarium in Urbana, Illinois. The facility, the first of its kind in the nation, is designed to heighten awareness of the ecological partnerships between pollinators and the plants that depend on them.
Photo by Fred Zwicky
Each frame in the observation hive can hold about 2,000 bees. This summer, the hive was bursting with more than 12,000 bees. If the bees run out of space, they will swarm and leave the hive to look for a bigger home. We want to keep them here so that visitors can see them for as many months as possible, but we also want the colony to be healthy. When the bees are not being observed, we turn out the lights and cover the glass with foam to mimic the darkness inside a human-made hive or hollow tree.
Deem checks other hives on the Pollinatarium property to find a frame filled with honey to help support the indoor observation hive.
Photo by Fred Zwicky
The queen this year is named Zig Zag Zoey Walker because when we turn the lights on, she walks in a zigzag pattern to find a hiding place. She has gotten used to the abrupt changes in light, however, and now will lay eggs with people watching.
Nathan Beach, left, and Lesley Deem don full beekeeping suits with screened veils and protective gloves as they prepare their tools and materials for the hive transition.
Photo by Fred Zwicky
Zoey is a great egg layer — so much so that twice this summer we had to adjust the hive to make room for more honey. The queen had filled every cell in the honeycomb with brood — eggs, larvae and pupae — leaving no room for honey. To reduce the number of bees in the hive, we removed the outer layer of glass, took out several frames of brood and replaced them with honey-filled comb. But by the end of summer, the hive had consumed all its honey.
Using a flashlight in the darkened room, Deem and Beach search for the queen to move her to the new hive. The other bees will follow her scent.
Photo by Fred Zwicky
The glass-walled frames allow us to see everything going on, but this artificial setup limits what the bees can do to regulate the hive. In a natural hive, the bees place the combs side by side and fill the spaces between with live bees. When it is cold, they cluster in a ball and vibrate their flight muscles, shivering to generate heat. They must eat honey to have the energy to do this.
But the observation hive ran out of honey, and, in response, the queen quit laying eggs destined to become winter workers. If a hive is weakened by a lack of food, pests will move in. These include small hive beetles and the lesser wax moth. In our observation hive, one sign of stress is when the workers start to neglect their duties, failing to remove dead summer worker bees, for example.
The team works to remove the frame with the queen on it. Deem keeps an eye on the queen while Beach removes the frame.
Photo by Fred Zwicky
To help them, we put the girls to bed. This means taking them out of the observation hive and putting them into a minihive where they can cluster together to stay warm during the winter months. Because the small number of bees may not have enough mass to keep them warm during the winter, we’re keeping the minihive indoors inside the temperature-controlled Pollinatarium. There is a pipe in the wall that allows them to go outside.
When we have finished, I feel great relief that the bees are tucked in and warm, with enough honey to get them through the winter. I do love the golden, stripey furry girls. They are fascinating to watch, learn about and share with other people.
The queen, Zig Zag Zoey Walker, center, is transferred to the new hive box and the other bees swarm around her.
Photo by Fred Zwicky
The team works to gently transfer the bees without also bringing along the beetles. Rather than shaking the bees, which would knock the beetles into the new hive, Beach uses a soft brush to gently encourage any stray bees to fly off or drop into a dustpan. The hive box is reconnected to the original entrance/exit, allowing the bees to fly outside at will.
Photo by Fred Zwicky
U. of I. photographer Fred Zwicky, foreground, had to suit up to safely capture the process of hive relocation at the Pollinatarium.
Photo by Fred Zwicky
Next spring, we will put the bees back in the observation hive so visitors can come and see them. This winter all are welcome to visit the Pollinatarium to learn more about honey bees, beekeeping, native bees, butterflies and other pollinators and the flowering plants they use.
