July 1967 School Magazine

Brisbane Girls' Grammar School Magazine

tulv,1967

Brisbane Girls' Grammar School Magazine

Jslv,1967

receive and store nectar from foraging bees, they attend to the pollen brought in and act as general workers in the hive. Bees of this age have their wax glands in the active secretary phase. Towards the close this period which lasts about ten days, the bees take on the duty of guarding the hive entrance. In the third period which is from 20 to, 30 days duration during the summer months, the workers are active only in the fields, and are engaged in foraging for water, pollen and nectar. They continue this work until the end of their normal life of a few weeks; sometimes it is very much less, as strong winds, cold showers, insectivorous birds and insect enemies all take a constant and heavv toll of the field bees. Only one member of the honeybee family - the drone escapes the duties of the society. Their one function in life is to mate with the virgin Queen when on her mating flight. They are unable to feed themselves but depend on the worker to feed them. They are supported in some numbers during the summer months but at the end of the season they are thrust from the hive to die of cold and hunger. Drones develop from the eggs of the Queen which are not fertilized. They are larger than the worker but smaller than the Queen, have very large eyes, shaggy coats and no sting. In each colony of bees there is one monarch - the Queen. Largest of the bees, she is the only honeybee without which the colony cannot survive. From larvae to adult insect, her existence is different in every way from that of the worker or the drone. The cell is irregular in shape, larger and hangs vertically. She is fed royal jelly throughout the larval stage. This difference in diet perhaps accounts for the fact that the Queen lives so long and develops complete reproductive organs. She may lay half a million eggs in her lifetime. A great majority of the eggs are fertilized by male sperm which she receives from one or more drones on her mating flight and which she stores for use all through her life. These fertilized eggs develop into workers (or Queens). In the summer she also lays some unfertilized eggs which develop into drones. On all but a few occasions the Queen's life is confined to her brood nest in the interior of the hive. She leaves the hive on her mating flight and also at swarming time. The Queen starts laying each year in early spring and lays more and more eggs each day until she reaches 2,000 eggs in early summer. She then gradually slows down until winter sets in. The worker bees feed her on royal jelly, which enables her to lay so many eggs. She may live four or five years. Our hive consists of a brood chamber or hive body and a super or honey chamber. The hive body is a box witho'r.rt top or bottom 20" by 16" and 9%" high. It is made of {" timber and the joints are dovetailed which make it exceptionally strong. This rests on the bottom board which is the same size but extends 2" further forward to provide a landing area for the incoming bees. Fastened to the upper surface of the board are three slats having the same dimensions as the hive body. This arrangement leaves an entrance at the front %" deep and extending the full width of the hive. The super is exactlv the same as the hive body and rests on top of the hive. This is covered with a super cover board of three ply and then the whole thing is covered by a hive cover which is made of wood and then covered

with galvanized iron to keep the hive dry and prevent extremes of temperature. The hive is painted white to heip prevent excess heat in the colony during the hot weather and has handles for easy handling. The whole hive stands on a stand 2' frorn the ground. On the inner walls of the hive are wooden rabbets on which are suspended the frames. There are 10 frames in the brood chamber and 9 frames in the super. Between these two boxes we have a queen excluder made of zinc with perforations of a definite size iarge enough to permit the passage of workers but prevents the Queen from entering the super to lay eggs. The frames we use in our hive are self spacing - that is provided with projections at the sides to preserve the bee space of Ys" so t}re bees can move freelv within the hive. The frames are wired and a thin sheet of ready made foundation cornb is attached to these. This sheet of pure bees wax has on it the imprint of the natural base of the honey comb and from this the worker bees con- struct perfect strong straight comb and it also allows faster building of the combs for brood and the storing of honey. Bees in the construction forces secrete little wax "bricks" of dull-yellow "beeswax". Their wax-producing glands lie on the under- side of the abdomen. Actually, these bricks are merely tiny flakes of wax - so tiny that it takes almost half a million flakes to make only a pound of wax. If you watch closely during this wax-making process the workers appear to be asleep as. they cling quietly to each other, Iined up like soldiers in a building chain. After a bee expels a flake, bristles on its hind legs spear it and bring it up to the chewing organs. With the hairline accuracy of engineers, the honevbees syste- matically process the wax into walls for hexagonal cells in the comb. These cells are from 11280 to a sheer 1/500 of an inch thick. A honey- comb is truly one of nature's wonders. The bees always start building from the top and the upper edges are reinforced. Its walls are delicately thin yet strong enough to hold several pounds of honey. The hexagonal cells are built side by side, eaclr. midrib serving for two cells, their sizes are designed to fit the sizes of the kind of bees whiph will hatch from them. To' prevent the honey and larvae from spilling out, the cells slope slightly from the horizontal down towards the middie of the comb. Bees manufacture a substance generally known as propolis which is their form of glue. It is supposed that the bees collect it from waxy bud scales and other parts of various trees and bring it from the fields in much the same manner as pollen. Their uses for it are many. The hive entrance is contracted and cracks are stopped, the covers and bottom boards are glued fast and frames cemented in place and because of this hive tools are needed to prise the frames out when inspecting the hive. Daily during the summer months, thousands of worker bees leave the hive for the first time. Now begins the heavy work of gathering supplies. The gatherers must make numerous flights, sometimes rang- ing a mile or more, in search of pollen and nectar. To gather pollen, a bee rummages about in the flowers until its body is completely dusted with the pollen. With the bristle-like hairs on its forelegs, it then combs the pollen off and packs it into pollen baskets on its two hind legs attaching securely with a tiny bit of nectar. Not wasting a second of its precious time it continues fastening the pollen in mid-air while fiying from one flower to another. Even when the fieLds are

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