Beeman's Beehut

Well there are many different types of bees in the world.  Everything from Wasps, to bumble bees and then to honrnets.  The Bee I want to write about is the Honeybee.  Within the bee realm there are different types of honey bees as well.  The most notorious honey bee most people know about is the Killer bee.

The Killer Bee is an African honey bee(or Apis mellifera scutellata)that was let loose in South America.  This bee has been as far north as southern Utah in the United States.  It’s temperament is extremely hostile and should be avoided at all costs.  These bees have a tendency to swarm a lot but are highly valued for their honey production.  Before the African Honey came to the contentant of South America, they didn’t produce much much honey in that region of the world.  Now countries such as Brazil are placed within the top 10 of the worlds leading honey producers.

Here in America we have many different varieties of Bumble Bees which you know about.  The Bumble Bees do produce honey but they store their honey into small round was containers we call honey pots.

These are not honey bees however they do produce honey.  You will find these nests usually hiding away in hay or in the ground somewhere.

Mason Bees are much smaller than honey bees.  They are considered as a major pollinator within the U.S. but these bees don’t live in colonies.  The mason Bees usually build their nests on the sides of walls or in long tubes which they pack pollen into then lay an egg within.  Recently there as been a bit of  a movement to help preserve these little bees from dying out.  You can simply build a nest for these little bees by taking straws and strapping them together.  Here’s a picture below.

Now i’d say its time to get to the point.  Granted the African honey bee is an honey bee but it isn’t used much here in the U.S.  Within the Honey Bee family there are many “Breeds” of honey bees.  The most Common is the Italian honey bee which came from Europe with the earlier settlers.  These bees are far more gentler than that of the Africanised Honey Bee.  They produce a good amount of honey as well as easy to work with.  Most Beekeepers within the U.S. use Langstroth hives to keep the bees in.  This helps in extracting honey and checking the brood(or eggs) for disease.

Having a hive like this I find makes beekeeping much more enjoyable.  Just by simply taking out the comb and seeing the queen is much fun.  I hope in my next post I can write a bit more about the defferences in honey bee breeds.  Just like how the African and the Italian are honey bees but two separate breeds of honey Bees.  Thank you For Reading.