By Sy Maher Inviting solitary bees to live in your yard is beneficial and fun. Solitary Bees almost never sting. You really have to annoy a native bee to get them defensive. Solitary bees have a short life cycle. For instance, the Mason bees come out in early spring, pollinates, makes its babies, and dies off […]
There are over two-hundred and fifty species of bumblebee (also written bumble bee). The Sonoran bumblebee of Arizona is a beautiful yellow and black bee. Other varieties bost different variations in color. A Bumblebee is quite large measuring from 14 to 18 millimeters long (.7 of an inch). The queens are even larger. Queen Bumblebees and […]
What an amazing contest! The plight of the bee is a hard one. Bees are in danger of being wiped off the planet by pesticides and by the ever diminishing space for them to find food in our cities. Some are even on the endangered species list. We would like to say Thank You to each […]
By Sy Maher Some basic information: A honey bee colony can house 20,000 to 80,000 bees. Honey Cells are on the top of a natural hive.Uncapped cells are full of wet shiny nectar. Once the honey is sticky enough the bees will cap (seal) the honey with wax to keep it protected from predators. If the bees […]
By Sy Maher Something to know. The African bee and the Africanized bee are not the same kinds of a bee. The bee that comes from Africa, or rather from South Africa is as plain as that, a South African Bee. Aggressive yes, but from Africa. An Africanized bee is a hybrid that results from […]
By Sy Maher The orderly pattern of the beehive is truly amazing and has been copied repeatedly in art and architecture. Bees construct hexagonal cells (six-sided), a pattern that has come to be known for its incredible strength, and structure. The production of honeycomb cells is a miraculous process. Bees eat honey and turn it […]
By Sy Maher There are only three types of honey bees in a hive, the drones, the workers, and the queen. They live in a social system that is both multifaceted and beautifully organized. From the moment they hatch until the time they die, one sees where the term worker-bee springs. Follow along and read […]
By Sy Maher Queen Bee The hive is a complex environment even though there are only three types of honey bees. The drones, the workers, and the queen. Drones (males) hatch out of unfertilized eggs, Workers and queens are females and born out of fertilized eggs. We will get to the other bees later although […]
In celebration and recognition of our native-born bees, Luckey Bee is having a slogan contest. Everyone knows Save the Bees—or Save All the Bees (the latter which I coined recently, but my slogan falls short of an exciting and motivational catchphrase). See what I mean? We all need a catch-phrase to help people know we need […]
In 1957 the Africanized Honey Bee often referred to as Killer Bee was brought to Brazil in hopes of increasing honey yield, but a swarm escaped quarantine. The species arrived in North America in 1985 and had been cross-breeding with the European bee here in the US ever since. The hot zones for these bees […]