BeeAgMag_Layout 1 6/2/15 2:17 PM Page 1
Faces of Mississippi’s
BEE INDUSTRY Jeff Harris
Johnny Thompson
Extension/Research Apiculturist
Beekeeper
Broke T Queens Philadelphia
What do you do? I sell honey bee queens to beekeepers. I also sell nucs, or nucleus colonies, which consist of a few thousand bees and a queen. My bees are shipped by UPS and the U.S. Postal Service in special packaging that keeps them safe. I sell to smaller beekeepers because the larger apiaries raise their own queens. My customers are usually repeat customers who are dividing their hives in half or in thirds and need a queen for each of the additional hives. The demand for queens is growing as more people become interested in keeping bees. Do you work full-time? I work from April to June and sell about 1,500 honey bee queens. If I could work year round, I could easily sell 5,000 queens, but I farm with my family. We have eight poultry houses and 250 head of mama cows. In addition, my parents sell raw honey through Broke T Honey to Whole Foods in Jackson, Williams Brothers in Philadelphia and Earth Bounty in Meridian. They also sell to the Neshoba County Co-op and from their home. They bottle their own raw honey. Our bee operation consists of 500 hives for honey and 432 hives for queen production and nucs. How do you raise multiple queens? I graft honey bee larvae into special queen cell cups that are affixed to bars. The bars are placed in frames, and the frames are inserted into queenless cell builders containing lots of worker bees. Since the hive doesn’t have a queen, the nurse bees rush to feed the larvae a whole lot of royal jelly, a protein-rich secretion from their glands. An excess of the royal jelly is needed to develop a queen. Why do you work with bees, and what type of skills do you need? I work with bees because they are fascinating. It takes a special person to succeed in beekeeping. With bees, you must be patient and willing to work hard. You must also be detail oriented because there are so many different things that need your attention. In addition, the equipment is expensive, and some people don’t want to make that investment. Plus, some people have a problem with being stung.
Beekeeping Camp
If you would like to learn more about beekeeping, please consider participating in the Beekeeping Summer Camp at Mississippi State University.
The camp is co-instructed by Dr. Jeff Harris (apiculturist) and Dr. John Guyton (4H/youth outreach & education). For more information, contact Dr. John Guyton at 662.325.3482 or jguyton@ext.msstate.edu.
Special thanks to the National Honey Board and Mississippi State University Extension Service for their assistance with this Ag Mag.
There are 18 bees hidden in the sunflowers on the front page.
Mississippi State University
g a M g A HONEY BEES An agricultural newsletter for kids from
What is your job? I am an entomologist who studies honey bees. My primary job is extension education, but I also conduct scientific research with honey bees. As an extension person, I teach beekeepers better ways for taking care of their bees. This includes showing them how to treat their bees for diseases and parasites and other health issues that hurt them. My research focuses on breeding honey bees that are resistant to a major parasite that kills bee colonies. This parasite is the varroa mite. It is the number-one killer of honey bees in the world. I selectively breed stocks of bees that can survive the infestation of this devastating mite. This research has shown much promise in the last 10 years, and we can produce honey bees that survive by keeping the mite populations from growing too high in their colonies. Why did you choose to do this? I have loved honey bees since I was 5 years old. My uncle kept bees, and he would take me to his colonies and let me taste the honey directly out of the hives. I have worked with honey bees since I was 8 years old. By the time I was 16 years old, I had 20-25 colonies in my backyard. After high school, I worked with a commercial beekeeper who had 5,000 hives of bees. He taught me that a beekeeper can earn a decent living if he or she is willing to work hard. We sold honey, beeswax and bees to earn a living. I paid for my undergraduate studies in college with that job. Although I loved bees as a kid, I also loved science. I had always wanted to be a scientist when I grew up. So, it was only natural that I became a scientist who studied honey bees. What type of education and skills do you need for your job? I have a doctoral degree (Ph.D.) in insect physiology and a master’s degree in entomology. My undergraduate degree was a B.S. in physical science and chemistry. After earning my doctoral degree, I was fortunate enough to be hired by the USDA Honey Bee Breeding Lab in Baton Rouge, LA. I worked there for 15 years or so before coming to Mississippi State University in 2012. Do you enjoy your work? I love my work. I get to enjoy my favorite critter just about every day. I also teach graduate students how to be a scientist. It is part of my responsibility to help train the next generation of research scientists. I also love to interact with beekeeper clients who need my help to solve problems. There is nothing better than to feel like you have helped someone solve a problem affecting their livestock (and I consider bees to be livestock). I cannot think of a better job to suit me! This issue of Ag Mag is compliments of:
Issues of Ag Mag can be ordered from the Women’s Department by contacting Pam Jones at pjones@msfb.org or 601.977.4854.
Mississippi Farm Bureau Federation ®
THE BUZZ ON BEES
Honey bees are insects and pass through four stages of life: the egg, larva, pupa, and adult. Complete metamorphosis takes between 16 and 24 days depending on the gender of the developing bee. The cycle begins when a queen bee lays an egg in an individual wax cell inside the hive. The egg hatches into a white larva with no legs on the fourth day. The larva then feeds on royal jelly and beebread (a mixture of nectar and pollen) until it reaches the right size. It then spins a cocoon around itself. The cell is then capped with wax and the larva transforms into the pupa. The pupa develops into a mature adult bee inside the capped cell. When fully developed, the mature bee chews its way out of the cell. Adult worker bees live approximately 45 days during the summer months.
Bees live in colonies, sometimes called hives. Within each hive, there are three types of honey bees: worker bees, a queen bee, and drone bees.
A single bee will only carry enough nectar to produce about 5 drops of ripened honey in her entire life.
Worker bees are female. As their name indicates, workers are always busy with one of their many jobs. Within the hive, they feed the larvae, protect the hive, keep the hive clean, and create wax and use it to make new cells. The workers are also responsible for grooming the queen and feeding her royal jelly. Royal jelly is made from protein-rich secretions from the heads of young worker bees. Outside of the hive, worker bees also have the important task of collecting the nectar from plants that is needed to make honey to feed the hive.
The queen bee’s most important job is to lay eggs. She is the mother of most of the hive, sometimes even all of them. She can lay between one and two thousand eggs a day during the peak of spring. She looks a little different from the other bees because she is longer and more slender. If a queen bee dies or becomes too weak, worker bees will feed large amounts of royal jelly to several larvae. Although all bees receive some royal jelly, the queen is fed a diet of only royal jelly in much larger amounts. This will create a new queen. Even though they are larger, a queen is hard to spot in a colony with thousands of bees. Beekeepers will sometimes mark a bee with a special paint on the thorax to identify it as a queen.
ow Ma ny H
Drone bees are male bees. They are bigger and are only there to mate with the queen. After mating, drones will die.
d o s e you See? e B
Look in the sunflower field and see how many bees you can find.
Answer can be found on the back page, bottom left.
BeeAgMag_Layout 1 6/1/15 1:30 PM Page 2
COOKING ACTIVITY
No-Bake Energy Bites INGREDIENTS 1 cup oatmeal 1/2 cup peanut butter 1/3 cup honey
HONEY:
1 cup coconut flakes 1/2 cup ground flaxseed meal 1/2 cup mini chocolate chips 1 teaspoon vanilla
FROM BEE TO BOTTLE
he sweet process of making honey all starts with a flower. Bees collect nectar from flowers with their tongue that is like a straw and called a proboscis. They then store it in a separate “honey stomach,” which is different from their digestive stomach. It can hold about 70 mg, which weighs almost as much as the bee itself. To fill up their “honey stomach,” a bee must visit 100 to 1,500 flowers. Many plants depend on bees to spread pollen from plant to plant for reproduction.
Mix together and let chill for 30 minutes in the refrigerator. After mixture has chilled, roll into balls and store in an airtight container in the refrigerator. Note: You can also press into a small baking dish and cut them into squares as needed.
After drinking the nectar and storing it, bees will fly back to the hive and pass the nectar to other “house bees.” These “house bees” then mix the nectar with enzymes and put it into a cell, where it remains exposed to air for a while to allow some of the water to evaporate. The unique design of a honeycomb helps with evaporation. The bees will also help speed the evaporation process by fanning the open cells with their wings. After the enzymes are added and the water is evaporated, the nectar becomes honey. The bees then cap the honey cells with beeswax.
All-natural, no additives
T
INSTRUCTIONS
Beekeepers then harvest honey by collecting the honeycomb frames and scraping off the wax cap the bees made to seal off honey in each cell. Once the caps are removed, the frames are placed in an extractor. An extractor is a centrifuge that spins the frames in a circle, forcing honey out of the comb. The honey is spun to the sides of the extractor, where gravity pulls it to the bottom and it can be collected.
Bees have to fly about 55,000 miles to produce a pound of honey, visiting around 2 million flowers.
FIND THE DIFFERENCES
There are seven differences in these two photos. Can you find them? Answers can be found at the bottom of the page.
After the honey is extracted, it is strained to remove any wax particles or other debris. After straining, it’s time to bottle, label, and distribute the honey to retail outlets. Whether you purchase your honey at a farmers market or the grocery store, make sure the ingredient list says pure honey. This guarantees nothing was added, from bee to hive to bottle.
The Dance of the Honey Bee Did you know bees communicate with each other by dancing? Once a honey bee has found food, she will return to the hive and dance on the honeycomb. The other bees have receptors on their feelers and legs which they use to feel the dance to learn where the food is. By smelling the dancing bee and getting a taste of her load of nectar, the other bees can even tell what type of flower she has visited. Different dances are used depending on how close the food is to the hive. There are several bee dances, but the most common are the round dance and the waggle dance.
Round Dance When food is close to the hive (less than 100 yards), a worker bee performs the round dance. She goes round and round, first one way and then the other. The round dance does not show the exact location of the flowers so fellow worker bees must fly out in many directions looking for them.
In a colony of 50,000 bees, there would be one queen, about 300 drones, and the rest would be worker bees.
Waggle Dance If the flowers are more than 100 yards away from the hive, the returning bee performs the waggle dance. The bee dances a half circle in one direction, turns, and runs straight while wagging her abdomen. Then she dances a half circle in the other direction. These two half circles form a figure eight. If the food is in the same direction as the sun, the central run of the dance is straight up the comb. If the food is to the left or right of the sun, the bee alters the direction of the dance by the correct amount to the left or right of the upright line.The distance between the hive and the food is communicated by the speed of the dance and the buzzing sound made by the dancing bee. The faster the worker dances, the closer the food. The waggle dance shows both location and distance of the flowers, so the bees know where to go to find food.
Orange missing from bottom of flower on left side, right antenna missing, top half of stem missing, smaller pollen basket, white section is larger on bee’s abdomen, petal missing on bottom left corner of flower, bee has an extra wing.
BeeAgMag_Layout 1 6/2/15 2:17 PM Page 1
Faces of Mississippi’s
BEE INDUSTRY Jeff Harris
Johnny Thompson
Extension/Research Apiculturist
Beekeeper
Broke T Queens Philadelphia
What do you do? I sell honey bee queens to beekeepers. I also sell nucs, or nucleus colonies, which consist of a few thousand bees and a queen. My bees are shipped by UPS and the U.S. Postal Service in special packaging that keeps them safe. I sell to smaller beekeepers because the larger apiaries raise their own queens. My customers are usually repeat customers who are dividing their hives in half or in thirds and need a queen for each of the additional hives. The demand for queens is growing as more people become interested in keeping bees. Do you work full-time? I work from April to June and sell about 1,500 honey bee queens. If I could work year round, I could easily sell 5,000 queens, but I farm with my family. We have eight poultry houses and 250 head of mama cows. In addition, my parents sell raw honey through Broke T Honey to Whole Foods in Jackson, Williams Brothers in Philadelphia and Earth Bounty in Meridian. They also sell to the Neshoba County Co-op and from their home. They bottle their own raw honey. Our bee operation consists of 500 hives for honey and 432 hives for queen production and nucs. How do you raise multiple queens? I graft honey bee larvae into special queen cell cups that are affixed to bars. The bars are placed in frames, and the frames are inserted into queenless cell builders containing lots of worker bees. Since the hive doesn’t have a queen, the nurse bees rush to feed the larvae a whole lot of royal jelly, a protein-rich secretion from their glands. An excess of the royal jelly is needed to develop a queen. Why do you work with bees, and what type of skills do you need? I work with bees because they are fascinating. It takes a special person to succeed in beekeeping. With bees, you must be patient and willing to work hard. You must also be detail oriented because there are so many different things that need your attention. In addition, the equipment is expensive, and some people don’t want to make that investment. Plus, some people have a problem with being stung.
Beekeeping Camp
If you would like to learn more about beekeeping, please consider participating in the Beekeeping Summer Camp at Mississippi State University.
The camp is co-instructed by Dr. Jeff Harris (apiculturist) and Dr. John Guyton (4H/youth outreach & education). For more information, contact Dr. John Guyton at 662.325.3482 or jguyton@ext.msstate.edu.
Special thanks to the National Honey Board and Mississippi State University Extension Service for their assistance with this Ag Mag.
There are 18 bees hidden in the sunflowers on the front page.
Mississippi State University
g a M g A HONEY BEES An agricultural newsletter for kids from
What is your job? I am an entomologist who studies honey bees. My primary job is extension education, but I also conduct scientific research with honey bees. As an extension person, I teach beekeepers better ways for taking care of their bees. This includes showing them how to treat their bees for diseases and parasites and other health issues that hurt them. My research focuses on breeding honey bees that are resistant to a major parasite that kills bee colonies. This parasite is the varroa mite. It is the number-one killer of honey bees in the world. I selectively breed stocks of bees that can survive the infestation of this devastating mite. This research has shown much promise in the last 10 years, and we can produce honey bees that survive by keeping the mite populations from growing too high in their colonies. Why did you choose to do this? I have loved honey bees since I was 5 years old. My uncle kept bees, and he would take me to his colonies and let me taste the honey directly out of the hives. I have worked with honey bees since I was 8 years old. By the time I was 16 years old, I had 20-25 colonies in my backyard. After high school, I worked with a commercial beekeeper who had 5,000 hives of bees. He taught me that a beekeeper can earn a decent living if he or she is willing to work hard. We sold honey, beeswax and bees to earn a living. I paid for my undergraduate studies in college with that job. Although I loved bees as a kid, I also loved science. I had always wanted to be a scientist when I grew up. So, it was only natural that I became a scientist who studied honey bees. What type of education and skills do you need for your job? I have a doctoral degree (Ph.D.) in insect physiology and a master’s degree in entomology. My undergraduate degree was a B.S. in physical science and chemistry. After earning my doctoral degree, I was fortunate enough to be hired by the USDA Honey Bee Breeding Lab in Baton Rouge, LA. I worked there for 15 years or so before coming to Mississippi State University in 2012. Do you enjoy your work? I love my work. I get to enjoy my favorite critter just about every day. I also teach graduate students how to be a scientist. It is part of my responsibility to help train the next generation of research scientists. I also love to interact with beekeeper clients who need my help to solve problems. There is nothing better than to feel like you have helped someone solve a problem affecting their livestock (and I consider bees to be livestock). I cannot think of a better job to suit me! This issue of Ag Mag is compliments of:
Issues of Ag Mag can be ordered from the Women’s Department by contacting Pam Jones at pjones@msfb.org or 601.977.4854.
Mississippi Farm Bureau Federation ®
THE BUZZ ON BEES
Honey bees are insects and pass through four stages of life: the egg, larva, pupa, and adult. Complete metamorphosis takes between 16 and 24 days depending on the gender of the developing bee. The cycle begins when a queen bee lays an egg in an individual wax cell inside the hive. The egg hatches into a white larva with no legs on the fourth day. The larva then feeds on royal jelly and beebread (a mixture of nectar and pollen) until it reaches the right size. It then spins a cocoon around itself. The cell is then capped with wax and the larva transforms into the pupa. The pupa develops into a mature adult bee inside the capped cell. When fully developed, the mature bee chews its way out of the cell. Adult worker bees live approximately 45 days during the summer months.
Bees live in colonies, sometimes called hives. Within each hive, there are three types of honey bees: worker bees, a queen bee, and drone bees.
A single bee will only carry enough nectar to produce about 5 drops of ripened honey in her entire life.
Worker bees are female. As their name indicates, workers are always busy with one of their many jobs. Within the hive, they feed the larvae, protect the hive, keep the hive clean, and create wax and use it to make new cells. The workers are also responsible for grooming the queen and feeding her royal jelly. Royal jelly is made from protein-rich secretions from the heads of young worker bees. Outside of the hive, worker bees also have the important task of collecting the nectar from plants that is needed to make honey to feed the hive.
The queen bee’s most important job is to lay eggs. She is the mother of most of the hive, sometimes even all of them. She can lay between one and two thousand eggs a day during the peak of spring. She looks a little different from the other bees because she is longer and more slender. If a queen bee dies or becomes too weak, worker bees will feed large amounts of royal jelly to several larvae. Although all bees receive some royal jelly, the queen is fed a diet of only royal jelly in much larger amounts. This will create a new queen. Even though they are larger, a queen is hard to spot in a colony with thousands of bees. Beekeepers will sometimes mark a bee with a special paint on the thorax to identify it as a queen.
ow Ma ny H
Drone bees are male bees. They are bigger and are only there to mate with the queen. After mating, drones will die.
d o s e you See? e B
Look in the sunflower field and see how many bees you can find.
Answer can be found on the back page, bottom left.