Peek inside active honeybee hive as it starts to grow

Honeybees are among the best pollinators in the world. They spend their days busily gathering pollen from plants and carrying it back to the hive to produce honey. Although their intent is to store honey to feed the queen, the larvae of new bees, and to act as their food source throughout the winter, a percentage of their honey becomes food for humans.

Without honeybees to pollinate flowers, crops, and other plants, plant life on earth would not survive long and our whole ecosystem would suffer. We are only now starting to appreciate how crucial their survival is to our own survival.

This video shows the birth of a new hive. Environmentalists, gardeners, and hobbyists are starting to raise bees for the obvious benefits of having a bee population near their plants and also as a way of contributing to the health of our planet. Kristy has done some research and has bought a Warre hive made out of cedar. Construction is precise and the bees will be very particular about their home. The central figure of any hive is the queen bee. This hive has a new queen, who is housed in a small plastic cage for two days. The worker and drone bees are attracted to her scent and they have spent a full day in a box with her. The confined space allows them to become used to her pheromones. During this time they will accept her as their queen and they will be committed to protecting and living with her.

The queen's capsule is placed in the center of the hive and the box of bees are emptied into the hive with her. The few bees that take flight during this time will not venture far, as they are now strongly attracted by her scent. The entrance to her capsule is plugged with candy and the bees will eat through this to free her. By this time, they will have bonded and begun the work needed inside the hive.

For two full days they work furiously to produce walls and cells made of beeswax. It is here that they will store their honey. Meanwhile, the queen lays up to 2,000 eggs per day. Most of these will be fertilized and will grow into female worker bees. The unfertilized eggs will become drones. Surprisingly, queens do not mate with males from their own hive. They fly to other colonies, mate and return. They can lay eggs for many weeks, having stored sperm for egg producing over time.

A bees lifespan is very short. In summer, it may be as few as six weeks. The colony will survive over the winter. They consume their honey store to help them produce body heat to keep their hive at a constant temperature. They cluster around the queen to protect her from the cold.

Bee hives are a great source of satisfaction for those wishing to help the environment. As a bonus, they are also a source of delicious honey.