This could be you!

Honey Bee Questions

1. How do bees make honey?

2. Do bees do anything useful - besides making honey?

3. Should I be worried about honey bee stings?

4. What’s the scoop on “killer bees”?

5. When did humans start keeping bees?

6. Are honey bees male or female?

7. Can you name some notable people who are/were also beekeepers?

(Check your answers è)

How did you do on the questions?

1. Bees make honey in several steps; first worker bees collect nectar from flower blossoms. It is taken to the hive where it is turned into honey by adding enzymes and removing water (evaporation).

1. Yes, they pollinate flowers and crops; the monetary value of pollination is 150 times that of the honey produced. More than one-third of the food consumed by the average American depends on pollination. Honey bees pollinate over one hundred different crops.

2. No. Honey bees are ‘gentle vegetarians’, are not aggressive, and must be provoked to sting. The usual reactions to a honey bee sting are swelling and itching which go away. A serious reaction is rare, occurring in less than 1% of people.
Most insect stings come from wasps and hornets, not honey bees.

3. A better term for ‘killer bees’ is Africanized bees. Experience in other countries and the southern US has shown that these bees can be managed for agricultural purposes and people can learn to live with them. Like all honey bees, they sting to defend their homes, but they have a ‘shorter fuse’. Virginia does not have Africanized bees.

4. The oldest record of humans keeping bees is found on wall paintings in Egypt dating from 1450 B.C. An even older record of humans collecting honey from wild bees is found in cave paintings in Spain dating from 6000 BC!

5. Most honey bees are female, and are called worker bees. A single colony may contain up to 50,000 worker bees and 1000 to 2000 males, called drones. A colony will also contain one female queen bee, whose job is to lay eggs.

6. Martha Stewart, Henry Fonda, Sir Edmund Hillary, George Washington, Aristotle.

A great family hobby

Beekeepers Association of Northern Virginia (BANV)

The Beekeepers Association of Northern Virginia (BANV) is a group of people who are interested in honey bees. Most of us live in Arlington or Fairfax counties.

Some of us keep honey bees, some keep solitary bees and some are just interested in bees. Some of us have hundreds of hives, others have none. We keep our honey bees in our backyards, on our friends’ farms, and in parks. Some of us rent our bees to farmers to pollinate their crops. You can find our honey for sale at local farmers’ markets and at our homes.

The goal of our Association is to increase peoples’ knowledge of bees and to promote beekeeping in Northern Virginia.

Meetings are open to nonmembers. We welcome newcomers and would be happy to help you get started in beekeeping, an interesting and rewarding hobby. Our dues are affordable. We do not discriminate. We welcome youngsters and support the Fairfax 4-H beekeeping club: 2 B A Bee.

Contact Us

http://www.beekeepersnova.org

Find Out More about Bees

Surf Websites

· http://www.beetography.com

· http://www.honeybee.com

· http://www.ibra.org.uk

· http://www.beeculture.com

· http://www.pollinatorparadise.com

Read Books (These books are available from the Fairfax County Libraries)

· A Book of Bees. S. Hubbell. 1988.

· Killer Bees. M. Hines. 1998.

· Letters from the Hive. S. Buchmann. 2005.

· Robbing the Bees. H. Bishop. 2005.

· Sweetness & Light. H. Ellis. 2004.

See Live Honey bees

· The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History’s Insect Zoo, Washington, DC.
http://www.mnh.si.edu/insect

· The National Visitor Center of the Agricultural Research Service, Beltsville, MD.
http://www.ars.usda.gov/main/main.htm

· Brookside Nature Center, Wheaton, MD.
http://www.mc-mncppc.org/Parks/nature_centers/brookside