How Do Bee Hives Start?
Have you ever wondered how beehives are created? Well, it is an interesting process. I mean, you have to get it started somehow, right? Beekeepers want the best hives and this means healthy, strong bees (and honey!). And the best way to do this is through good beekeeping practices. Ultimately, beekeepers want to guarantee that their bees will be the healthiest around. And that’s no easy feat. That’s why beekeepers have so many tricks up their sleeves.
A beehive is an incredible machine, containing complex structures for storing honey and reproduction of the colony. Understanding how a beehive is started can help us understand how honey bees can survive over winter.
How do beehives start?
Let’s start with the basics. A beehive is a structure made of beeswax and wood that houses the queen bee, her children, and the worker bees. Bees are social insects that live like this because they need to survive as a group. They cannot survive on their own they need each other.
There are three types of bees:
- Queen,
- Drone and
- Worker.
The queen is the only one who can lay eggs; drones are males that do not help with anything else in the hive; worker bees do all the work. All of them live in a beehive together!
A beehive starts when a queen bee decides she wants to create her colony and she leaves her old home (the place where she was born). She does this by flying around until she finds a place where there are no other bees around (so they won’t eat her). Then she lays an egg on some pollen that she finds there and flies away! A few days later this egg hatches into a larva that looks like nothing but an ugly blob on top of some pollen grains with four legs sticking out of it! This is called a “larvae” or “larval stage” because it hasn’t developed yet.
The adult bees perform different tasks based on their age:
- Young workers build new comb and tend to the young larvae and pupae.
- Intermediate-aged workers collect pollen and nectar and feed them to the young larvae, as well as guard against predators (such as ants).
- Older workers produce honey for themselves, but they also help out with building comb, collecting pollen, feeding the young larvae, guarding against predators, etc.
Sometimes bees make their hives but usually, they start by finding an existing hive or hollow tree. In the winter, they’ll live in large clusters in hollow trees or under rocks. During the summer months, they tend to move around more often so they can stay near lots of food sources.
When you see a new cluster of bees hanging out in your yard or on a fence post, there’s probably already been some activity going on in that area for a few weeks before you noticed them!
