08/16/2026
What a fun day at UUFE! Capt. Chris brought his observation honeybee hive for show and tell. Those gathered learn a bit about bees, heard selected readings, sang some songs, shared announcements and tasted some honey.
The activity piqued my interest (Rick Hughes), so I dug a little deeper, asked some online questions and will share what I found:
Honey bee hives operate as a single genetic family, not a random assembly of mixed origins.
Hive Relationships and OriginsGenetic family: All bees in a single hive are biological sisters or brothers sharing the same mother (the queen).
Single mother: The queen lays all the eggs for the entire colony.
Multiple fathers: The queen mates with 10 to 20 drones during her mating flight, meaning workers have different fathers (half-sisters).
No outsiders: Guard bees physically block and fight off bees from other hives to prevent resource theft. Guard bees recognize their family members primarily by scent, physical interaction, and specific behavioral cues. Stationed at the entrance as the hive’s bouncers, these middle-aged worker bees act as information processors to clear or reject incoming traffic.
Hive Cleanliness and Waste Removal/Undertaker bees: Specialized worker bees immediately carry dead bees out of the hive and drop them far away.
Hygienic behavior: Workers scrape away mold, mites, and debris, carrying the trash outside the hive entrance.
Defecation flights: Bees never p**p inside the hive; they fly outside on "cleansing flights" to excrete waste.
The Truth About Honey: Origin and Excretion
Not an excretion: Honey is not p**p, nor is it vomit; it is a regurgitated plant product.
Intended purpose: It is the colony's stored winter food source to keep them alive when flowers are not blooming.
The or***ce: Honey comes out of the bee's mouth.
Two stomachs: Honey bees have a regular stomach for digestion and a separate "honey stomach" (crop) strictly used as a backpack to carry nectar.
What Happens When the Hive is Full- Swarming: When a hive runs out of physical space due to excess honey and bees, the colony splits.
The split: The old queen takes about half the worker bees and leaves the hive to find a new home.
The remaining hive: The leftover workers raise a new queen and inherit the existing hive and honey stores.
Lifespan and Honey Production, Limits Lifespan: Worker bees live 4 to 6 weeks during the busy summer, but up to 6 months during the inactive winter.
Individual production: A single worker bee makes only about 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey in her entire lifetime.
Distance traveled: Bees must fly a collective 55,000 miles and visit 2 million flowers to gather enough nectar for just 1 pound of honey. Note that bees collect nectar (not pollen) to make honey.
Hive Sound and Communication, Both elements: The hum of a hive is caused by both rapid wingbeats (up to 230 beats per second) and active communication.
Vibrational pipes: Queens make distinct "piping" or "quacking" sounds through thoracic vibrations to communicate with rivals.
Vocabulary size: Bees do not use words, but they have a complex vocabulary of dozens of chemical pheromones and physical movements.
The waggle dance: Foragers perform a figure-eight dance to communicate the exact distance, direction, and quality of a food source relative to the sun.
How Honey is Processed- Raw material: Honey does not come straight out of the bee ready to eat; it starts as watery flower nectar.
Enzyme addition: Inside the honey stomach, the bee adds the enzyme invertase to break complex nectar sugars down into simple sugars.
Dehydration process: House bees pass the nectar mouth-to-mouth to reduce water content, then fan their wings over the comb to evaporate the remaining moisture until it thickens into honey.
Wax capping: Once the water content drops below 18%, workers seal the cell with a beeswax cap to preserve it indefinitely.
