The Beekeepers Club Inc.

Reference of Knowledge about Bees and Beekeeping

Principle Races of Honey Bees (by Ian Brown)

Although there are many races of honey bees around the world, most popular among beekeepers are European honey bees, known for their good qualities. The main races kept here in Australia are-

Italian - Queens vary in colour from leathery brown to orange, which makes them comparatively easy to find in the hive. Hard workers and fairly prolific breeders, with a tendency to swarming. Some strains tend to breed as long as there is honey in the hive, so attention must be paid to maintaining sufficient stores. Moderately good temperament. Workers have orange bands round the abdomen. Most used of all the races of honeybees throughout the world.

Caucasian (Mountain Grey) - Queens are black and are more difficult to find than the Italian queens. Keep a fairly strong hive and are not much given to excess swarming. Good workers but have a tendency to collect excess amounts of propolis, even, in some cases, building walls of propolis at the entrance, to modify the size to their liking. Generally good temperament. Workers have grey bands round the abdomen. Hard to find in pure form since the introduction of Australian quarantine regulations. Second most popular breed worldwide, but far behind the Italians.

Carniolan - Queens are black and so more difficult to find. Keep a moderate strength hive and not given to excess swarming. Generally good workers and, in pure form, the best tempered of the three main races. Workers have grey-white bands round the abdomen. Third in popularity but well behind the previous two breeds. Again, hard to obtain in pure form.
Please refer to Wikipedia Definition of Apis Mellifera for more details.



Pheromones and the Queen Bee (by Ian Brown)
Apart from being the only egg layer in a normal hive, the queen is a source of important chemical messages, known as pheromones. As the queen moves over the comb during her egg-laying activities, the adjacent bees turn towards her, and, while appearing to groom her, collect these pheromones, which are passed from bee to bee throughout the hive. This has the effect of sending a message round the hive that a laying queen is present and of bonding up to 50,000 or so bees to act as a single unit.

The eagerness that the bees display for these pheromones can be seen by the way that the bees are attracted to fingers that have handled a queen, or the way they are attracted to a queen mailing cage up to a week or more after the queen has left it. Conversely, if the queen is destroyed or taken from the hive, the bees quickly show signs of distress that their source of pheromones has been removed, and will run around the outside of the hive adjacent to the entrance. Very often, if the hive is opened, the bees appear to be quite agitated and will give out a distinct roaring sound.

The amount of pheromones that the queen produces depends on a number of factors including the age of the queen - younger queens producing more pheromones than older queens, and on the egg-laying activity of the queen - more egg-laying means more pheromones, and vice versa. The rate of egg-laying, in its turn, depends on how well the attendant bees feed the queen.

In addition to bonding the bees, the pheromones, if present in adequate quantities, inhibit the bees from building queen cells and starting to raise new queens. However, in spring and early summer, when the queen can be laying in the order of 2,000 or more eggs a day, the hive population can build up to such numbers that the queen’s pheromone output is insufficient to satisfy the bees, particularly if the queen is ageing and her pheromone output is deteriorating. Alternatively, if the hive is too small to accommodate the queen’s laying capacity, her egg laying decreases and with it, her pheromone production. In these cases, the inhibition on raising queen cells is removed, and queen cells are started, which at this time of year, results in swarming.

At other times in the year, an ageing queen laying fewer eggs, can considerably weaken a hive before the bees appear to get the message, via a reduced pheromone ration, that the queen needs replacing and that queen cells should be started. These supercedure cells are usually fewer in number than swarm cells, and occasionally lead to there being two laying queens in a hive, often on adjoining combs. It appears that the young queen does not see the older queen as a threat, possibly due to the older queen’s low pheromone output, though after a week or two, the older queen disappears.

Another operation where queen pheromones play an important part is in the introduction of new queens into a hive. If the queen has spent several days in a mailing cage her pheromone production will be nil, so she will be regarded as an intruder without any attraction if she is introduced directly and will almost certainly be killed. The usual arrangement is for the bees to be separated from the queen by a barrier of special candy which takes the bees several days to eat through. In the meantime, the bees are making indirect contact with the queen through the wire mesh of the cage, including feeding her, which should stimulate the production of some pheromones and render the queen acceptable to them when she is finally released. However, one should not be too keen to inspect the hive for several days, to give the queen time to commence laying well and producing her pheromones in sufficient quantities to satisfy the bees and render them less aggressive towards her. It is certainly true that a queen in full lay can be introduced to a strange hive with minimum precautions as she will be producing sufficient pheromones to render her attractive to the bees immediately.