It’s good to be the queen.
She gets all the best food. She gets to mate with the strongest males. And if there are rivals for the throne, she gets to kill them, no questions asked.
Such is the life of the head of the hive, according to beekeeper Judy Schmaltz, owner of Jodi Bee Honey Farm (3119 Oak Hill Place) in Clarkston.
Schmaltz participated in a Jan. 30 fireside chat about honey bees at the Oxford Public Library as part of ‘The Way We Worked,? a traveling Smithsonian Institute exhibition that ended its local run Feb. 1.
‘The honey bee is unique in that it will store nectar in the form of honey . . . and they are able to live (off it) through the winter,? she said. ‘The honey is their energy food. In the winter, they pretty much just eat honey.?
But ‘they produce far more (honey) than they need for their survival,? Schmaltz said.
‘That’s why we raise bees.?
Schmaltz has been raising bees since the early 1980s and can be found selling her products at the annual Michigan Renaissance Festival.
On its own, a honey bee can’t survive for very long. It must be part of a hive.
‘The organism is the hive,? Schmaltz said. ‘The bees are part of that organism.?
There are three types of honey bees that keep this organism going.
Drones are the male bees and their only purpose in life is to service the queen ? literally. They fly around the top of the hive, waiting to mate with her.
Workers are females and the hive could not function without them.
‘She does all the work,? Schmaltz said. ‘She does everything in the hive. She feeds the drones. She feeds the queen.?
Workers also take care of all the cleaning and nursing functions to prepare the next generation of bees; they produce wax to build honeycomb (a mass of hexagonal cells); and they go out into the field collecting nectar and pollen.
Workers sometimes lay eggs, but they’re always drones because they don’t get fertilized.
At the top of the hive is the queen, which is ‘a fully-developed worker bee.?
She gets that way by eating a ‘very nutritious substance? called ‘royal jelly,? Schmaltz said.
Worker bees produce royal jelly via glands located at the tops of their heads.
Schmaltz explained that all bees are fed royal jelly for three days during their gestation. After that, they’re cut off and fed ‘bee bread,? a mixture of pollen and honey.
The queen, however, gets to eat royal jelly throughout her entire 18-day gestation.
‘She’s more mature because of nutrition,? she said.
The queen’s primary function is to mate with drones and lay eggs to keep the hive populated.
‘When the queen hatches, she walks around the hive for a while, then she flies way up in the air to the drone corridor (of the hive),? Schmaltz said. ‘She goes way high (because) she wants to mate with the strongest drones, the ones that can fly the highest.?
The queen copulates with several drones.
When mating is complete, those drones die.
‘That’s their sole function in life,? she said.
The queen stores sperm from all these drones, then uses it to fertilize her eggs after she lays them. Eggs that get fertilized become workers and eggs that don’t become drones.
Usually, 10 percent of a hive’s population consists of drones, except during the winter, according to Schmaltz.
‘Come winter, they take that drone, drag him out and won’t let him back in,? she said. ‘They don’t need to feed an extra mouth in the winter . . . And then in the spring, they start laying drone eggs again because they might need to replace a queen.?
Because the hive is the organism, it propagates itself by swarming. Schmaltz said if a hive is strong, it will usually do this in the spring.
When this happens, the old queen quits laying eggs and slims down so she can fly. She takes a third to half of the bees from the current hive with her to form the new one.
The rest of the bees stay behind and wait for their new queen to be born.
Several potential queens are fed royal jelly during their gestation. When the first one hatches from her cell, she begins making a ‘peeping? sound, according to Schmaltz, to which the others respond.
She then goes around stinging and killing her rivals, thus ensuring her ascension to the throne.
The thought of getting stung by a bee scares many folks, but Schmaltz assured the crowd these insects aren’t hunting for people.
‘Most bees aren’t aggressive. Even bumblebees, they’re gentle,? she explained. ‘Yellow jackets are notoriously aggressive, but just shoo them away and they go away.?
Schmaltz said by and large, ‘honey bees are pretty docile.? She explained some honey bees are more aggressive than others. The Italian bees are probably one of the least aggressive varieties while the Africanized bees are very aggressive.
‘They will chase you a half-mile, half the hive, if you get into their hive,? Schmaltz said.
She said most bees only become aggressive if people invade their nest and ‘mess? with their home.
Beekeepers use smoke to calm the insects, but why does that work?
Schmaltz believes it’s because they perceive the smoke as a sign of danger, such as a forest fire, so they ‘gorge? themselves with honey in case they have to leave the hive. This makes it very difficult for them to use their stingers.
‘They can’t bend their back to sting (when they’re full of honey),? she said. ‘The stinger’s in their tail and it’s much more difficult (to use it at that point). And besides, they’re worried about other things (besides) this dumb beekeeper that’s bugging them . . . They kind of ignore you if you smoke them.?
‘That’s my theory,? Schmaltz noted. ‘Like I said, you (ask) 10 beekeepers, you get 11 opinions.?
To learn more about Jodi Bee Honey Farm, please visit www.jodibeehoneyfarm.com or call (248) 627-6496.