This past weekend, GreenUP Ecology Park held its final Open Hive! of the season. Throughout the summer, members of the public were invited to four drop-in Open Hive! events to experience a hands-on introduction to the world of honeybees. Participants were able to put on protective beekeeping equipment including veils, hoods, and gloves, enter the hive enclosure, and open the hive alongside our host beekeepers.
The GreenUP Community Beekeeping Program promotes the awareness and appreciation of pollinators as a healthy part of our community through bee keeping education and advocacy. Understanding honeybee life cycles and Ecology is an important step in learning to coexist with critical pollinators, particularly in urban areas where there has been as much as 60 percent loss of bee populations.
Honey bees are fascinating, ancient insects with advanced social behavior and with complex symbiotic relationships with pollinator plants, which have evolved together over time. Did you know that a single honeybee can visit and pollinate up to 5,000 flowers in a single day?
Check out these five interesting and lesser-known facts about honeybees:
1. Smoking the hive prior to entering triggers a response that bees feel in the presence of a forest fire.
Before entering the hive, beekeepers add cedar shavings and burlap to a hive smoker. A smoker is a stainless steel device with a long nose and built-in bellows used to create a smouldering fire that funnels smoke out the top, so that it can be aimed at the hive.
Smoking the hive creates a feeding response in bees. They fill their bellies with sweet honey in anticipation of a long flight after abandoning the hive due to fire. When a bee’s belly is full, it is difficult for them to engage the muscles necessary to sting, making it safer for beekeepers to enter.
2. Honey is actually evaporated bee vomit.
You may already know that the sweet, thick liquid that you enjoy on your breakfast toast or your afternoon tea is the food bees make after foraging nectar from flowers.
But did you know that nectar is converted to honey when the bee regurgitates the liquid and stores in honeycombs inside the beehive?
Bees ingest and regurgitate the nectar many times until it is high enough in sugars to be stored as their food source. They continue to fan the honey in the honeycombs with their wings to continually evaporate more water from the liquid, which prevents fermentation.
The bees then cap the cells with two layers of beeswax to seal they honey for consuming later.
3. Honey made in different locations can taste different, even when made as close as across town.
The colour and taste of honey will differ depending on the source of nectar or the species of flowers in bloom. Each flower has its own unique nectar and flavour that is reflected in the taste of the honey.
Growing and blooming seasons will determine the taste of honey. For example, clover honey is light in colour and mild in flavor whereas buckwheat honey is quite dark and strong tasting. When honey is collected after corresponding growing seasons, different flavours and types of honey can be separated and packaged. In Ontario, many interesting honeys are available including blueberry, lavender, and goldenrod.
GreenUP is currently stewarding six hives throughout Peterborough at five locations including at GreenUP Ecology Park, the Liftlock Community Garden, Lock 20 – Parks Canada, Greenwood United Church, and Holy Cross Secondary School.
GreenUP’s resident beekeeper, Marcy Adzich, explains, “When tasting honey from the five hive locations in Peterborough, you can recognise subtle differences in the taste, likely due to the vicinity of different nectar sources to the hive.”
4. The queen bee lays her body weight in eggs each day!
The queen bee in any colony lays approximately 1,500 eggs each day for up to five years.
There is only one queen in each hive and she is the mother of all the bees in the beehive. The queen is tended to by attendant worker bees, who provide her with everything she needs including food, and disposal of her waste; her only job is to reproduce.
The queen bee lays eggs that become either female workers or male drones. She has the ability to control the sex of the eggs and will do so depending on the seasonal cycles, conditions in the hive, and the specific needs of the hive.
5. Honeybees are not native to Ontario.
Honeybees (Apis mellifera) originate in Europe and are bred for their docile nature and volume of honey production. They are small, furry, and brown with black stripes on their abdomen. Honeybees are often confused with their cousins, bumblebees, wasps or hornets, and other species of native bees.
Honeybees have become important pollinator species in Ontario and their recent decline has consequences for agriculture, ecosystem resiliency, and sustainability. Ontario proudly boasts 40 species of native bees, as well.
Bees are fascinating, ancient insects that are interesting to observe and learn from. Participating in community environmental stewardship programs for critical pollinators in Peterborough allows citizens to engage in conversation about bees and how we may co-exist with them in urban environments.
“The GreenUP Community Beekeeping Program promotes pollinator habitat in Peterborough and educates our community about the importance of bees to our food system and to local ecosystems,” explains Adzich, “This program also helps to build community through the stewardship of native bees and managed honeybees in Peterborough.”
Open Hive! drop-in events have come to a close for the season, however GreenUP also hosts a year-long beekeeping program which opens for registration each spring. To read more about the GreenUP Community Beekeeping Program, visit greenup.on.ca.
