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The
Oldest Bee Removal Service in Southern California. |
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Licensed
Insured Bonded |
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We
offer IMMEDIATE REMOVAL 7 days a week |
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Bee
Hives Swarms Wasps Yellow Jackets Bumble Bees Hornets |
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We
currently service over 50 municipalities, Major entertainment
centers, Various parks and recreation centers, All of
the major studios, and thousands of commercial and residential
properties. |
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- Inspection
Services
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Structure Repair
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Live Hive Removal
- Swarm
Capture
- Residential
& Commercial
- Satisfaction
Guaranteed
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What
do bees look like? All bees have a head, a thorax (middle
section), and an abdomen (end section). The head has
their eyes, feelers, and tongue. The thorax has six
legs and two wings. The abdomen has the breathing sacs,
scent gland, wax gland, poison gland, and the stinger
on the very end. Honey bees are hairy. They are yellow
and black in color. The back legs of the worker females
have little sacs to carry pollen.
What are workers, drones, queens, and larvae? There
is only one queen per hive, and all she does is lay
eggs. There may be 40,000 worker bees. The workers are
all female, but they can’t have babies. There
may be as many as 2000 males or drones. Drones don’t
do any work. Only a few drones gets to be fathers of
the babies. All the rest just hang around. The queen
is the biggest, and the workers are the smallest. The
queen lays her eggs in a cell of the honeycomb (hive).
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Each
egg hatches, and a little worm-like larva crawls out.
The worker bees feed pollen and honey to the baby larva.
Soon, it spins a little web blanket inside the cell and
becomes a pupa. After 16 to 24 days, a full grown bee
climbs out of the cell. Worker bees do different things
depending on how old they are. They take care of the babies,
make wax, build the honeycomb, clean up the hive, store
pollen, make honey, guard the hive, and collect pollen
or nectar. When someone says "busy as a bee,"
they are definitely talking about the workers. If a worker
(sterile female) is born in the spring, she probably only
lives 4 or 5 weeks. If she’s born in the fall when
there’s less work to do, she may survive the winter.
Drones (males) are kicked out of the hive when the weather
gets cold. Queens can live for several years.
What do bees eat? Bees eat nectar (sugary water) and pollen
(yellow protein powder) which are made by flowers. Nectar
is what the worker bee uses to make honey. When she gets
to a flower, she drinks as much nectar as she can hold.
Then she passes the nectar to another worker bee (who
holds the nectar on her tongue) so the water in it can
evaporate. When most of the water has evaporated, the
sweet nectar becomes honey, which is stored in the hive.
What is a hive? A hive is the bees’ home. It is
made mostly of wax. Worker bees can make wax from the
bottom of their abdomens. They use their legs to shape
this wax into the cells of their honeycomb or hive. Each
cell is hexagonal or six-sided. The hive usually has several
layers of cells. Some cells are just for baby bees. Near
the baby bee section, there are cells for storing pollen.
In other parts of the hive, there are cells just for storing
honey.
Honey bees make and do things that are helpful to humans.
Honey bees provide us with honey, royal jelly, beeswax,and
propolis. They are very cooperative insects and have good
colony structure. They are the prime pollinators of the
planet. Honey bees are social insects. A typical hive
is divided primarily into worker bees and drones, ruled
by the queen.
Honey bees have to go through a long process to make honey.
The house bee and the field bee are involved in the process.
First the field bee goes out and collects nectar, which
it stores in an internal honey sac. They bring it back
to the hive and transfer it to the house bee tongue to
tongue. Then the house bee spreads a drop of nectar on
the roof of a cell in a comb. During the next couple of
days other house bees fan their wings over the nectar
so that the moisture evaporates (nectar is 80% water and
honey is 19% water). Finally, more house bees cover every
cell filled with modified nectar with a thin layer of
wax. |
Royal
jelly is a secretion from workers’ glands.
It is fed to the queen bee throughout her larval
and adult life. It is also fed to larvae for the
first two and a half days. It is a creamy milky-white
color, strongly acidic, has a prudent odor and
bitter taste.The queen eats only royal jelly,
the worker bees eat some royal jelly and the drones
eat the least amount. Royal jelly is high in protein
and is rich in vitamins B, C and D.
For
honey bees, propolis is used for a kind of glue.
Honey bees gather propolis from trees and other
vegetation. They use it to seal cracks and crevices
in the hive to make it less drafty when it is
cold. Propolis is sticky when it is warm and it
is difficult to deal with when it is hard.
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Since
many of our pollinators are now scarce, we are dependent
on the honey bee to pollinate our crops. Pollination
starts when a field bee crawls around a plant blossom.
The honey bee is dusted with pollen. Then the field
bee flies over to another blossom with the pollen
in its hair. When the bee lands, the pollen falls
onto this blossom’s stigma. Now a fruit, vegetable
or other crop can grow.
The queen's eggs hatch in three days, and the larvae
are fed with royal jelly produced by worker bees.
After a few more days, the larvae are fed on honey
and pollen. The exception is a larva fed solely
on royal jelly, which will develop into a queen
bee. The larva takes eight days to develop, undergoing
several moltings before spinning a cocoon within
the egg cell. Here the larva pupates. For
the first ten days of their lives, the female worker
bees clean the hive and feed the larvae. After this,
they begin building comb cells. On days 16 through
20, a worker receives nectar and pollen from older
workers and stores it. After the 20th day, a worker
leaves the hive and spends the remainder of its
life as a forager. The foragers die usually when
their wings are worn out after approximately 500
miles of flight. Honeybee wings beat at a constant
rate of 230 beats per second or 13,800 beats/minute.
The frequency of the wing beats was much higher
than expected for an insect of this size. Honeybees
make up for carrying heavier loads or for changes
in air density by altering the amplitude of their
wings and catching more air. This makes the wing
muscles work harder, but it does not change the
frequency of the wing beats. The science of bee
flight remained an unsolved mystery until December
of 2005. A study published in Proceedings of the
National Academy of Science details the work supervised
by Michael Dickinson from Caltech.The
population of a healthy hive in mid-summer can average
between 40,000 and 80,000 bees. The workers cooperate
to find food and are widely believed to use a pattern
of "dancing" (known as the bee dance or
waggle dance) to communicate with each other.
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Swarming
is the natural means of reproduction of honeybee
colonies (considering the colony as the organism
rather than individual bees which cannot survive
alone). In the process two or more colonies
are created in place of the original single
colony. It is considered good practice in
beekeeping to reduce swarming as much as possible
by several techniques, as allowing this form
of reproduction often results in the loss
of the more vigorous division, and the remaining
colony being so depleted that it is unproductive
for the season. Beekeepers control reproduction
by making nucs (nucleus or starter colonies)
or by shaking package bees (usually for sale)
from hives in the spring prior to the natural
swarm time.
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New
honeybee colonies are formed when queen bees
leave the colony with a large group of worker
bees, a process called swarming. The first
or prime swarm generally goes with the old
queen. As soon as the swarm is established
as a new colony, the bees raise a new queen,
or sometimes a replacement virgin queen is
already present in the swarm. Afterswarms
are usually smaller and are accompanied by
one or more virgin queens. Sometimes a beehive
will swarm in succession until it is almost
totally depleted of workers.
Swarming is mainly a spring phenomenon, usually
within a two or three week period, the usual
period depending on the locale. But occasional
swarms can happen throughout the producing
season. Swarms of bees sometimes frighten
people, though they are usually not aggressive
at this stage of their life cycle. This is
principally due to the fact the swarming bees
have no hive to defend and are more interested
in finding a new nesting point for their queen.
This does not mean that bee swarms will not
attack if they perceive a threat; however,
most bees only attack in response to intrusions
against their hive, and swarming bees have
no hive. Most swarms will move on and find
a suitable nesting location in a day or two. |
During the first year
of a queen's life the colony has little
incentive to swarm, unless the hive
is very crowded. During her second spring,
however, she seems to be programmed
to swarm. Without beekeeper "swarm
management" in the second year,
the hive will cast a "prime swarm"
and one to five "after swarms."
The old queen will go with the prime
swarm, and other swarms will be accompanied
by virgin queens.
Swarming
is to the beekeeper what losing all
of his calves is to a cattleman. The
hive that cast the swarm is often
so badly depleted that it will be
unproductive for the entire season.
For this reason, beekeepers try to
anticipate swarming and assist the
bees to reproduce in a more controlled
fashion by "splitting hives"
or making "nucs." This saves
the "calves" and keeps the
"cow" in condition to accomplish
some work.
Beekeepers
that do not wish to make increase
may use one or more of the many methods
for swarm control. Most methods simulate
swarming to extinguish the swarming
drive.
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The
Demaree method of swarm control is
to remove a frame of capped brood
with the queen. This frame is put
in a hive box with empty drawn frames
and foundation at the same location
of the old hive. A honey super is
added to the top of this hive topped
by a crown board. The remaining hive
box is inspected for queen cells.
All queen cells are destroyed. This
hive box, which has most of the bees,
is put on top of the crown board.
Foraging bees will return to the lower
box depleting the population of the
upper box. After a week to ten days
both parts are inspected again and
any subsequent queen cells destroyed.
After another period of separation
the swarming drive is extinguished
and the hives can be re-combined.
Another swarming control method is
called checkerboarding. In the early
spring, frames are rearranged above
the growing brood nest. The frames
above the brood nest are alternated
between full honey frames and empty
drawn out frames or even foundationless
frames. It is believed that only colonies
that have enough reserves will attempt
to swarm. Checkerboarding frames above
the brood nest apparently destroys
this sense of having reserves. When
honeybees swarm from the hive they
do not fly far at first. They may
gather in a tree or on a branch only
a few meters from the hive. There,
they cluster about the queen and send
scout bees out to find a final location.
The swarm may fly for a kilometer
or more to the scouted out location.
When the swarm first forms a cluster
it is relative easy to capture the
swarm in a suitable box. There are
also swarm traps with pheromone lures
that can be used to attract swarms.
Swarming
creates a vulnerable time in the life
of honeybees. Cast swarms are provisioned
only with the nectar or honey they
carry in their stomachs. A swarm that
does not quickly find a home and more
nectar stores will starve. This happens
most often with early swarms that
are cast on a warm day that is followed
by cold or rainy weather in spring.
The remnant colony after having cast
one or more swarms is usually well
provisioned with food, but the new
queen can be lost or eaten by predators
during her mating flight, or poor
weather can prevent her mating flight.
In this case the hive has no further
young brood to raise additional queens,
and it will not survive. Good beekeepers
who are aware that a colony has swarmed
will usually add brood with eggs,
so that the bees have additional young
bees to care for the queen and a second
chance to raise a new queen if the
first one fails.
Africanized
bees are notable for their propensity
to swarm. Being tropical bees, they
tend to swarm any time incoming food
is scarce, thus making themselves
vulnerable in colder locales. Mainly
for this reason, they tend to not
survive in higher latitudes. "The
officials" claim that the so
called killer bees are in Southern
California. In Three decades of servicing
Southern California, we have never
encountered a single Killer Bee.
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