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How Many Honey Bees in a Hive?
A colony is the community of bees that live in a hive. But just how many honey bees are in a hive? This is a question that isn’t so easy to answer in exact figures. There are statistically accurate estimates that vary with the size of the hive. So, without talking about specifics, let’s look at how many honey bees typically live in a hive. A single honey bee colony could consist of anywhere from 10,000 to well over 70,000 bees. The hive often functions as a single organism with the majority of members being female worker bees who are all often offspring of the same queen bee. Determining the…
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Where To Buy Bees For a Hive
You chose your beehive, set it up and got it ready for it’s new little dwellers. What’s next? Now it’s time to get your first bee colony! If you are new to beekeeping, the question of where to buy bees for a hive is a very important one. It’s not as if you can go to the local pet store and order a box of bees. So where do beekeepers get their bees? How Do Beekeepers Get Bees? There are 3 ways beekeepers get bees. They either buy a package of bees, buy a nucleus colony, or they catch a swarm. The most common method for new beekeepers is to buy…
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What is Brood in Beekeeping?
If you are learning about beekeeping you will notice the word brood used often. And if you are new to the world of beekeeping brood is probably an unfamiliar term to you. So, what is brood in beekeeping? In beekeeping the word brood refers to the eggs, larvae, and pupae of the bees. They reside in the brood chamber, which is usually the bottom boxes of the hive. Frames in which brood are developing are called brood frames. These frames contain brood in various stages of development, as well as some pollen and nectar in the upper corners. It is important for beekeepers to be able to identify brood patterns,…
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How Many Queen Bees are in Each Hive?
The “Queen Bee” is often thought of as the most important member of the colony and bee hive. In many ways, this is actually true. However, there are some situations where the worker bees have more “say” and control over the colony than the queen bee. Let’s take a quick look at how many queen bees there can be in a bee hive and how important the queen bee actually is to the colony. How Many Queen Bees Can There Be in a Bee Hive? The simple answer to this question is one. In most cases, there’s only one queen bee in a bee hive. There are, however, some situations…
