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The head  of a honey bee (close up).       A view of the five eyes of a honey bee.  The eyes on top of the honey bees head are called ocelli.  The eyes on the side of the head are compound eyes. 

  A honey bee gathering nectar and pollen.  You may click on this photo to enlarge it.   Note how the pollen is sticking on this bee.    This is a Rose-of Sharon tree/bush Hibiscus syriacus coelestis.   Bees are very attracted to the Rose-of-Sharon.    It is a hardy deciduous flowering shrub blooming in mid summer.  Planted easily from gathered seeds.

This honey bee is flying from blossom to blossom.  Note that it is not paying any attention to the photographer.  Its sole purpose is to visit flowers to gather nectar and pollen.  It is not in a defensive mode.

There are several things about this picture we would like to point out.   First, when you first start a hive, this is what it should look like after about eight weeks when started from a package.  It should be ready for the second deep hive body.  Second, this hive shows the bees being fed with a division board feeder.  We highly recommend feeding bees with a feeder the bees can get to during cold weather.  The common boardman feeder that sits on the front landing board of a hive is outside and during cold weather, the bees will be unable to get any food you give them in it.

On occasions, an experienced beekeeper will make up a new hive from an existing hive.  This is called splitting a hive.  In this photograph, the center frames have been removed.  Five frames from the strong hive next to it will be removed from that hive and placed into this hive.  The five frames left  in the stronger hive will be moved to the middle of the brood chamber and new frames added to the outside.  That strong hive would also now required feeding.  One needs to add a new queen to the hive being created.

The proper way to hold a frame from a hive to examine it.  The frame needs to be tilted slightly so that sun light can penetrate to the bottom of the cells.  

Reading a frame of bees.   What is one suppose to see?   First, this frame is taken from a hive in the early spring.  The bees have brought in pollen which is stored in the cells in area A.  The queen has been laying eggs and some of the (worker) larva have been capped over as can be seen at B.  Usually a little later in the spring, the bees will create a band of honey which encircles the brood across the top of the frame.  Along the top bar one can also see evidence of drone brood which has been capped over.

A field of wild mustard (Brassica nigra) which is found commonly in waste areas and fields.  An early spring plant that bees visit for spring build up.  Important in some areas.

Some beekeepers clip the wings of their queens.  We would recommend that you practice this with drones before you begin with a queen.   The reason to clip a queens wing are : a beekeeper might prevent the loss of a valuable queen, try to prevent a hive from swarming, and a system to kept track of how old a queen is by cutting wings on alternate sides from year to year.

A honey bee in flight.  Note the pollen on the legs of the honey bee as she is about to alight on a new flower.

This is a honey bee gathering nectar.  Note the position of the honey bee within the flower.  She is projecting her proboscis into the nectaries of this flower.  She rubs against the stamens accidentally to pick up pollen grains.

Some products of the hive.  Shown are wax candles made in various sizes and shapes as well as some honey candy.

This is another form of a honey product.  This is a gift package of cream honey and extracted honey.  Cream honey is finely granulated honey produced by the Dyce process.  Some cream honeys are then mixed with fruit extracts which make them desirable for the holiday gift trade.  Extracted honey is liquid honey removed from comb by extracting the honey (spinning it out of the comb).

The value of attending bee meetings is the opportunity to meet important bee people.  This picture is of Dr. Harry Shimanuki  and his wife during a break in the bee meeting.  Dr. Shimanuki recently retired from the USDA laboratory in Beltsville, Md.

And this group was made up of individuals attending the summer EAS meeting in Salisbury, MD. in 2000.  Bee meeting are held on the local, state, regional and national levels.   You should consider attending such a meeting if you want to expand your knowledge and network with other beekeepers.

Bees on the outside of this bee hive indicate that the hive is crowded.  It could indicate that more boxes (supers) need to be added.   If the hive gets hot inside, bees will also crowd outside the hive on the landing board.  If conditions continue to force the bees to gather outside the hive, it might also contribute to the hive swarming.  

Newly built comb is very light yellow in color.  The honey bees on this comb are Italian bees.  There are several darker bees in the photo.  These bees are most likely hybrids in which an Italian queen mated with a dark drone.  The bees are sisters but may have as many as 20 different fathers -- making the sister really half-sisters.  This genetic variation within a hive actually help honey bees survive the various threats encounter over the life of the colony.

The hives shown here are set up off the ground on pallets.  Pallets are readily available at many construction sites and business which receive goods and products delivered by truck.  A standard pallet will hold four hives with telescoping covers. Some beekeepers worry about hives being too close together; however, our experience shows that bees in this arrangement do quite well.  Commercial beekeepers keep their hives on pallets because they can be moved easily with a fork lift.

Can you find the queen?  She is found about four bees up from the bottom center of the picture.  This is an Italian queen.  If you look carefully in the enlarged photograph, you will see eggs at the bottom of the dark cells to the rear of her abdomen.

Honey takes many forms and one of the jobs of the beekeeper is to decide which form that will be. Here we see finished "ROSS ROUNDS®"  This product is comb honey produced in a special super called a Ross Round Super.  The frames shown to the back of the honey are plastic with spaces for round plastic rings in which the bees drawn out comb and fill them with honey.  Generally, comb honey sells for about two times the cost of extracted honey.  For example, if a one pound jar of honey sells for $2.00 then a comb Ross Round would sell for $4.00.  Of course, the price will depend on the wholesale price of honey at any particular time.

Have you wondered what queen cells look like?  Here we have four naturally built cells.  Queen cells hang downward and look somewhat like peanut pods.  When you see capped queen cells like those shown, it would indicate that the new queens will be emerging within a week or less.  If you are trying to prevent swarming and you see queen cells, you will need to do something fast.

Honey bees produce large amounts of surplus honey at times.  This photo gives you an idea of what a full super of capped honey looks like.  This super is going to be removed and taken to the extracting room.  In the extracting room the cappings will be cut off the surface of the comb and the honey spun out of the comb.  It will then be sold as liquid extracted honey.  Most honey sold in the U.S.A. is extracted honey.

A beekeepers cutting grass and weeds around his bee hives.  Several things we would like to point out about this picture are: 1) notice that the hives are leaning.  When hives are full of honey, they are very heavy and the support for the bottom board may sink into the ground forcing the beekeeper to level the hive before it falls over.  2) Bees don't care what the color of the hives are.  This beekeeper has used several colors.  3) Notice the rocks on the top covers.  Some beekeepers use rocks and bricks to hold lids on bee hives to prevent the lids from being blown off in high winds.

 Larva grow very fast and I have read that a nurse bee will visit each approximately 2000 times.  I don't know who was counting and I don't know how accurate that figure is but the point is, it takes a lot of visits to feed this growing larva.

Not all honey bees are European.  This is a picture of a tree in India with a large number of bee nest in the same tree.  These bees are approximately three times the size of the European honey bee found in the United States, South America, Australia & New Zealand, and most of Europe and Africa. The habit of these bees are in many ways similar to European bees except that they migrate with the seasons and build their single comb high up in trees -- often sharing a tree with other colonies of bees.  These bees are known as the giant honey bee Apis dorsata.                

These bees cluster on the face of the single comb and are very aggressive.  It is illegal to import bees from other parts in the world into the U.S.A. due to the possibility of introducing a pest which can not be controlled and which might cause harm to the present beekeeping industry.  These bees would be difficult to manage as we do with the European bee which will adapt to a man-made hive.

  This is how honey bees exchange food.   Foraging honey bees return to the nest with a load of nectar and pass this off to a young hive bee who will then reduce the moisture and deposit the nectar into a honey cell.

This is a hive with a fire ant mound built against the side of a hive body.  One of the first warnings I received when I worked in Georgia was do not under any circumstances step on an ant mound.   You can see how fire ants are transported if this hive is moved.  Some of the ants will cling to the bottom board which is protecting the ant nest.  It could also be a painful experience for the beekeeper.   

Honey bees are not the only insect that stings.  This is a photograph of an individual who came into contact with fire ants.  Fire ants were imported into the U.S. they are not native insects.   They are commonly found in the south but have been transported west.  The California dept. of Agriculture examines all trucks carrying bees into the state from states where fire ants are found to avoid a fire ant invasion, however, some have been found in California.  

The honey bee cell is considered to be a perfect example of architecture.  When new,  wax comb is almost white and very transparent.   As it ages it becomes yellow with travel stain from the bees walking on the comb and as young developing pupa build their cocoons, the comb becomes dark brown to black.

Many beekeepers in the past and some in the present started  beekeeping by finding a swarm.  Swarms generally take the common shape shown in this picture.  Most are found within easy reach, however, some settle high up in trees and are not worth the possible fall from a ladder to get them.  Beekeepers are often besieged by home owners with bees in their house.  Again, the trouble is most likely more than the bees are worth.  If a swarm is found in a place that is easily accessible, it is easy to capture.  One needs to prepare a box for the bees to enter and then if the owner of the tree allows, cut the branch and place it at the entrance to the box or over the box.  

  Where do queens come from?   This is a picture of a queen cell builder yard.  Each of the hives shown are raising queen cells which will be placed into nuc's.  A nuc is a small hive in which the queen cell will be placed and a young queen will emerge from the cell.  She will then mate and start laying eggs.  At that point she will be harvested and sold to someone wanting a new queen.  A new queen cell will again be placed in the nuc when the queen is removed.

Where do package bees come from?  They come from hives such as the two shown here.  Most package bee producers are located in areas that have warm weather during early February, March and April.  

This is a package of bees.  The bees are being shook from a frame into a funnel which empties into this wire cage.  Packages are sold as two pound, three pound, and four pound packages.  Packages are sold with and without queens. Usually however, the package price will indicate that a queen is included.  Packages without queens are used to increase bee populations in weak hives.

This is an example of a well dressed beekeeper.  This hive was extremely aggressive and such equipment is absolutely necessary when working such a hive.  Note the bee veil and suit are one unit.  The gloves make it possible to work this hive without getting all stung up.  We were looking for the queen to kill her and replace her with a queen that had gentle genetic characteristics.    The old queen must be found in such a situation if the beekeeper wants to introduce a new queen.

Honey that is capped over must have the cappings removed if the beekeeper intends to spin the honey from the comb.  This is done with an uncapping knife as shown in this picture.

On occasion a swarm will settle in a tree or bush.  They will build their nest.  Bees that do not seek out a shelter in cold climates will not survive the winter in such an exposed position as this.  The comb of a honey bee colony is always made of wax.  This is quite different from the paper nest of wasp and hornets.

What should a perfect frame of brood look like.   This is our example. It includes the classic capped brood centered in the frame with very few open cells, the upper part of the frame is filled with honey and pollen.   Photo provided to us by Guss Pappas of Worthington, Ohio.

  This is an example of what bees will do to a hive body if you remove any frames from it.  In this case, a beekeeper started a new colony of bees and failed to remove the cage from the hive after the bees were introduced.  Because bee space was violated, the bees filled the cavity of open space with comb built at various angles.

A comb of laying worker brood.  Note the bumpy cells on the face of the comb in what should be worker cells.

This is roping of American foulbrood.  If the brood cell is broken open and the dead sticky mass of dead larva tissue is stirred with a toothpick or other object, the larvae tissue will rope out in a string from the cell as shown here.

How young can a person start beekeeping.   This is a picture of Ian Lennon of Columbus, Ohio.  He is four years old.  He has been stung but that does not deter him from wanting to work bees.  He has a protective bee suit and special gloves made just for youthful beekeepers.   He has built up confidence and can remove a frame by himself from a hive of bees and describe workers, drones, and queens.   His learning curve is starting early.

A common way of feeding bees dry sugar during winter.  The sugar is poured onto the inner cover around the vent hole.  Bees will eagerly get to it.

You can train bees to land in a swarm almost anywhere.  At the EAS meeting a few years ago, this was demonstrated.   This picture was  taken during that exercise.   How is it done?    Attach a queen in a cage at the place you want the bees to gather into a swarm (artificial swarm).   In this case, a cross was made of wood sticks, a queen cage with queen attached at the intersection of the two pieces of wood and a package of bees dumped on the ground at the foot of the cross.  In very short time the bees had gathered around the queen cage and formed an (artificial swarm).

Moving bees by truck.  Commercial beekeepers move bees from site to site for a number of reasons.  Mostly to increase income from pollination or honey crops.    Some move bees south for winter to avoid heavy winter losses and the ability to make early splits in the spring.

Bee hives can be painted all colors.  Pictured here are hives on pallets ready to be loaded on a truck.  Heavy equipment is need for a beekeeper to handle hives in this fashion.   Two common loaders are:  skid type loaders and articulated loaders.

This is a well kept bee yard with honey supers ready to gather a good honey crop.  All hives are set up on concrete blocks and each hive entrance is painted a different color.

A concrete block has been placed at the front of the bottom board to allow for an additional landing area and it keeps weeds from blocking the entrance.

A good look at capped honey.  Note how white the surface of the cappings are! This is ripe honey ready to be harvested.

This is the entrance to a bee nest in a tree.  Wild bee colonies are found in trees, buildings, and even outhouses.*   Would you believe that some people still have outhouses!   Some comb can be seen this this photograph taken near Delaware, Ohio in 1995.    The bees in this nest failed to survive into 1996.   As with all bees, mites have taken a toll and bee trees are harder and harder to find.  The art of "lining bees" is almost lost.