®

A n a g r i c u l t u r a l n e w s l e t t e r f o r k i d s f r o mM i s s i s s i p p i F a r m B u r e a u F e d e r a t i o n

This issue of Ag Mag is

compliments of:

Issues of Ag Mag can be ordered from the Women’s Department by contacting Pam Jones

at pjones@msfb.org or 601.977.4854.

AgMagHONEY BEES

Honey bees are insects and pass through four stages of life: the egg, larva, pupa, and adult.Complete metamorphosis takes between 16 and 24 days depending on the gender of thedeveloping bee. The cycle begins when a queen bee lays an egg in an individual wax cellinside the hive. The egg hatches into a white larva with no legs on the fourth day. Thelarva then feeds on royal jelly and beebread (a mixture of nectar and pollen) until it reaches

the right size. It then spins a cocoon around itself. The cell is then capped with wax and thelarva transforms into the pupa. The pupa develops into a mature adult bee inside the cappedcell. When fully developed, the mature bee chews its way out of the cell. Adult worker bees liveapproximately 45 days during the summer months.

Bees live in colonies, sometimes calledhives. Within each hive, there are three types of

honey bees: worker bees, a queen bee, and drone bees.

Worker bees are female. As their name indicates, workers are always busywith one of their many jobs. Within the hive, they feed the larvae, protectthe hive, keep the hive clean, and create wax and use it to make new cells.The workers are also responsible for grooming the queen and feeding her royal jelly. Royal jelly is made from protein-rich secretionsfrom the heads of young worker bees. Outside of the hive, worker bees also have the important task of collecting the nectar fromplants that is needed to make honey to feed the hive.

The queen bee’s most important job is to lay eggs. She is the mother of most of the hive, sometimes even all of them. She canlay between one and two thousand eggs a day during the peak of spring. She looks a little different from the other bees becauseshe is longer and more slender. If a queen bee dies or becomes too weak, worker bees will feed large amounts of royal jelly toseveral larvae. Although all bees receive some royal jelly, the queen is fed a diet of only royal jelly in much larger amounts. Thiswill create a new queen. Even though they are larger, a queen is hard to spot in a colony with thousands of bees. Beekeepers willsometimes mark a bee with a special paint on the thorax to identify it as a queen.

Drone bees are male bees. They are bigger and are only there to mate with the queen. After mating, drones will die.

THE BUZZ ON BEES

Look in the sunflower field and see how many bees you can find.

Answer can be found on the back page, bottom left.

There are 18 bees hidden in the sunflowers on the front page.

Faces of Mississippi’s

Jeff HarrisExtension/ResearchApiculturist

Mississippi StateUniversity

What is your job?I am an entomologist who studies honey bees. My primary jobis extension education, but I also conduct scientificresearch with honey bees. As an extension person, I teachbeekeepers better ways for taking care of their bees. Thisincludes showing them how to treat their bees for diseasesand parasites and other health issues that hurt them. Myresearch focuses on breeding honey bees that are resistantto a major parasite that kills bee colonies. This parasite is thevarroa mite. It is the number-one killer of honey bees in theworld. I selectively breed stocks of bees that can survive theinfestation of this devastating mite. This research has shownmuch promise in the last 10 years, and we can produce honeybees that survive by keeping the mite populations fromgrowing too high in their colonies.

Why did you choose to do this?I have loved honey bees since I was 5 years old. My unclekept bees, and he would take me to his colonies and let metaste the honey directly out of the hives. I have worked withhoney bees since I was 8 years old. By the time I was 16years old, I had 20-25 colonies in my backyard. After highschool, I worked with a commercial beekeeper who had 5,000hives of bees. He taught me that a beekeeper can earn adecent living if he or she is willing to work hard. We soldhoney, beeswax and bees to earn a living. I paid for myundergraduate studies in college with that job. Although Iloved bees as a kid, I also loved science. I had always wantedto be a scientist when I grew up. So, it was only natural that Ibecame a scientist who studied honey bees.

What type of education and skills do you need foryour job?I have a doctoral degree (Ph.D.) in insect physiology and amaster’s degree in entomology. My undergraduate degreewas a B.S. in physical science and chemistry. After earningmy doctoral degree, I was fortunate enough to be hiredby the USDA Honey Bee Breeding Lab in Baton Rouge, LA.I worked there for 15 years or so before coming to MississippiState University in 2012.

Do you enjoy your work?I love my work. I get to enjoy my favorite critter just aboutevery day. I also teach graduate students how to be ascientist. It is part of my responsibility to help train the nextgeneration of research scientists. I also love to interact withbeekeeper clients who need my help to solve problems.There is nothing better than to feel like you have helpedsomeone solve a problem affecting their livestock (and Iconsider bees to be livestock). I cannot think of a better job tosuit me!

How Many Beesdo you See?

A single bee will only carry enoughnectar to produce about 5 drops ofripened honey in her entire life.

If you would like to learn more about beekeeping, pleaseconsider participating in the Beekeeping Summer Campat Mississippi State University.

The camp is co-instructed by Dr. Jeff Harris (apiculturist)and Dr. John Guyton (4H/youth outreach & education).For more information, contact Dr. John Guyton at662.325.3482 or jguyton@ext.msstate.edu.

Beekeeping Camp

Special thanks to the National Honey Board and Mississippi State UniversityExtension Service for their assistance with this Ag Mag.

Johnny ThompsonBeekeeper

Broke T QueensPhiladelphia

What do you do? I sell honey bee queens to beekeepers. I also sell nucs, ornucleus colonies, which consist of a few thousand bees anda queen. My bees are shipped by UPS and the U.S. PostalService in special packaging that keeps them safe. I sell tosmaller beekeepers because the larger apiaries raise theirown queens. My customers are usually repeat customers whoare dividing their hives in half or in thirds and need a queenfor each of the additional hives. The demand for queens isgrowing as more people become interested in keeping bees.

Do you work full-time? I work from April to June and sell about 1,500 honey beequeens. If I could work year round, I could easily sell 5,000queens, but I farm with my family. We have eight poultryhouses and 250 head of mama cows. In addition, my parentssell raw honey through Broke T Honey to Whole Foods inJackson, Williams Brothers in Philadelphia and Earth Bountyin Meridian. They also sell to the Neshoba County Co-op andfrom their home. They bottle their own raw honey. Our beeoperation consists of 500 hives for honey and 432 hives forqueen production and nucs.

How do you raise multiple queens? I graft honey bee larvae into special queen cell cups that areaffixed to bars. The bars are placed in frames, and the framesare inserted into queenless cell builders containing lots ofworker bees. Since the hive doesn’t have a queen, the nursebees rush to feed the larvae a whole lot of royal jelly, aprotein-rich secretion from their glands. An excess of the royaljelly is needed to develop a queen.

Why do you work with bees, and what type of skills doyou need? I work with bees because they are fascinating. It takes aspecial person to succeed in beekeeping. With bees, you mustbe patient and willing to work hard. You must also be detailoriented because there are so many different things that needyour attention. In addition, the equipment is expensive, andsome people don’t want to make that investment. Plus, somepeople have a problem with being stung.

BEE INDUSTRY

BeeAgMag_Layout 1 6/2/15 2:17 PM Page 1

No-Bake Energy BitesCOOKING ACTIVITY

INGREDIENTS1 cup oatmeal1/2 cup peanut butter1/3 cup honey

1 cup coconut flakes1/2 cup ground flaxseed meal1/2 cup mini chocolate chips1 teaspoon vanilla

Mix together and let chill for 30 minutes in the refrigerator.

After mixture has chilled, roll into balls and store in an airtight container in the refrigerator.

Note: You can also press into a small baking dish and cut them into squares as needed.

INSTRUCTIONS

After drinking the nectar andstoring it, bees will fly back to the hive

and pass the nectar to other “house bees.”These “house bees” then mix the nectar with

enzymes and put it into a cell, where it remainsexposed to air for a while to allow some of the water toevaporate. The unique design of a honeycomb helpswith evaporation. The bees will also help speed theevaporation process by fanning the open cells withtheir wings. After the enzymes are added and the

water is evaporated, the nectar becomeshoney. The bees then cap the honey

cells with beeswax.

he sweet process of makinghoney all starts with a flower. Bees

collect nectar from flowers with their tonguethat is like a straw and called a proboscis. They

then store it in a separate “honey stomach,” which is different from their digestive stomach. It can hold

about 70 mg, which weighs almost as much as the bee itself. To fill up their “honey stomach,” a bee must visit

100 to 1,500 flowers. Many plants depend on bees to spread pollen from plant to plant

for reproduction.

Beekeepers then harvest honeyby collecting the honeycomb frames and

scraping off the wax cap the bees made to seal off honey in each cell. Once the caps are removed,

the frames are placed in an extractor. An extractor is acentrifuge that spins the frames in a circle, forcing honey

out of the comb. The honey is spun to the sides ofthe extractor, where gravity pulls it to the

bottom and it can be collected.

After the honey is extracted, it isstrained to remove any wax particles or other

debris. After straining, it’s time to bottle, label, and distribute the honey to retail outlets. Whether you purchase your honey at a farmers market or the

grocery store, make sure the ingredient list says purehoney. This guarantees nothing was added, from

bee to hive to bottle.

FROM BEE TO BOTTLEHONEY:

Did you know bees communicate with each other by dancing? Once a honey bee has found food, she willreturn to the hive and dance on the honeycomb. The other bees have receptors on their feelers and legs which

they use to feel the dance to learn where the food is. By smelling the dancing bee and getting ataste of her load of nectar, the other bees can even tell what type of flower she has visited.

Different dances are used depending on how close the food is to the hive. There are several beedances, but the most common are the round dance and the waggle dance.

Round DanceWhen food is close to the hive (less than 100 yards), a worker bee performs the round dance. She goesround and round, first one way and then the other. The round dance does not show the exact location of

the flowers so fellow worker bees must fly out in many directions looking for them.

Waggle Dance If the flowers are more than 100 yards away from the hive, the returning bee performs the waggle dance. The

bee dances a half circle in one direction, turns, and runs straight while wagging her abdomen. Then shedances a half circle in the other direction. These two half circles form a figure eight. If the food is in the samedirection as the sun, the central run of the dance is straight up the comb. If the food is to the left or right ofthe sun, the bee alters the direction of the dance by the correct amount to the left or right of the upright line.The

distance between the hive and the food is communicated by the speed of the dance and the buzzing soundmade by the dancing bee. The faster the worker dances, the closer the food. The waggle dance shows bothlocation and distance of the flowers, so the bees know where to go to find food.

All-natural, no additives

Bees have to fly about 55,000 miles toproduce a pound of honey, visiting around

2 million flowers.

The Dance of the Honey Bee

In a colony of 50,000 bees, there would be one queen, about 300 drones, and the rest would be worker bees.

FIND THE DIFFERENCES

Orange missing from bottom of flower on left side, right antenna missing, top half of stem missing, smaller pollen basket, white section is larger on bee’s abdomen, petal missing on bottom left corner of flower, bee has an extra wing.

There are seven differences in these two photos. Can you find them? Answers can be found at the bottom of the page.

T

BeeAgMag_Layout 1 6/1/15 1:30 PM Page 2

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A n a g r i c u l t u r a l n e w s l e t t e r f o r k i d s f r o mM i s s i s s i p p i F a r m B u r e a u F e d e r a t i o n

This issue of Ag Mag is

compliments of:

Issues of Ag Mag can be ordered from the Women’s Department by contacting Pam Jones

at pjones@msfb.org or 601.977.4854.

AgMagHONEY BEES

Honey bees are insects and pass through four stages of life: the egg, larva, pupa, and adult.Complete metamorphosis takes between 16 and 24 days depending on the gender of thedeveloping bee. The cycle begins when a queen bee lays an egg in an individual wax cellinside the hive. The egg hatches into a white larva with no legs on the fourth day. Thelarva then feeds on royal jelly and beebread (a mixture of nectar and pollen) until it reaches

the right size. It then spins a cocoon around itself. The cell is then capped with wax and thelarva transforms into the pupa. The pupa develops into a mature adult bee inside the cappedcell. When fully developed, the mature bee chews its way out of the cell. Adult worker bees liveapproximately 45 days during the summer months.

Bees live in colonies, sometimes calledhives. Within each hive, there are three types of

honey bees: worker bees, a queen bee, and drone bees.

Worker bees are female. As their name indicates, workers are always busywith one of their many jobs. Within the hive, they feed the larvae, protectthe hive, keep the hive clean, and create wax and use it to make new cells.The workers are also responsible for grooming the queen and feeding her royal jelly. Royal jelly is made from protein-rich secretionsfrom the heads of young worker bees. Outside of the hive, worker bees also have the important task of collecting the nectar fromplants that is needed to make honey to feed the hive.

The queen bee’s most important job is to lay eggs. She is the mother of most of the hive, sometimes even all of them. She canlay between one and two thousand eggs a day during the peak of spring. She looks a little different from the other bees becauseshe is longer and more slender. If a queen bee dies or becomes too weak, worker bees will feed large amounts of royal jelly toseveral larvae. Although all bees receive some royal jelly, the queen is fed a diet of only royal jelly in much larger amounts. Thiswill create a new queen. Even though they are larger, a queen is hard to spot in a colony with thousands of bees. Beekeepers willsometimes mark a bee with a special paint on the thorax to identify it as a queen.

Drone bees are male bees. They are bigger and are only there to mate with the queen. After mating, drones will die.

THE BUZZ ON BEES

Look in the sunflower field and see how many bees you can find.

Answer can be found on the back page, bottom left.

There are 18 bees hidden in the sunflowers on the front page.

Faces of Mississippi’s

Jeff HarrisExtension/ResearchApiculturist

Mississippi StateUniversity

What is your job?I am an entomologist who studies honey bees. My primary jobis extension education, but I also conduct scientificresearch with honey bees. As an extension person, I teachbeekeepers better ways for taking care of their bees. Thisincludes showing them how to treat their bees for diseasesand parasites and other health issues that hurt them. Myresearch focuses on breeding honey bees that are resistantto a major parasite that kills bee colonies. This parasite is thevarroa mite. It is the number-one killer of honey bees in theworld. I selectively breed stocks of bees that can survive theinfestation of this devastating mite. This research has shownmuch promise in the last 10 years, and we can produce honeybees that survive by keeping the mite populations fromgrowing too high in their colonies.

Why did you choose to do this?I have loved honey bees since I was 5 years old. My unclekept bees, and he would take me to his colonies and let metaste the honey directly out of the hives. I have worked withhoney bees since I was 8 years old. By the time I was 16years old, I had 20-25 colonies in my backyard. After highschool, I worked with a commercial beekeeper who had 5,000hives of bees. He taught me that a beekeeper can earn adecent living if he or she is willing to work hard. We soldhoney, beeswax and bees to earn a living. I paid for myundergraduate studies in college with that job. Although Iloved bees as a kid, I also loved science. I had always wantedto be a scientist when I grew up. So, it was only natural that Ibecame a scientist who studied honey bees.

What type of education and skills do you need foryour job?I have a doctoral degree (Ph.D.) in insect physiology and amaster’s degree in entomology. My undergraduate degreewas a B.S. in physical science and chemistry. After earningmy doctoral degree, I was fortunate enough to be hiredby the USDA Honey Bee Breeding Lab in Baton Rouge, LA.I worked there for 15 years or so before coming to MississippiState University in 2012.

Do you enjoy your work?I love my work. I get to enjoy my favorite critter just aboutevery day. I also teach graduate students how to be ascientist. It is part of my responsibility to help train the nextgeneration of research scientists. I also love to interact withbeekeeper clients who need my help to solve problems.There is nothing better than to feel like you have helpedsomeone solve a problem affecting their livestock (and Iconsider bees to be livestock). I cannot think of a better job tosuit me!

How Many Beesdo you See?

A single bee will only carry enoughnectar to produce about 5 drops ofripened honey in her entire life.

If you would like to learn more about beekeeping, pleaseconsider participating in the Beekeeping Summer Campat Mississippi State University.

The camp is co-instructed by Dr. Jeff Harris (apiculturist)and Dr. John Guyton (4H/youth outreach & education).For more information, contact Dr. John Guyton at662.325.3482 or jguyton@ext.msstate.edu.

Beekeeping Camp

Special thanks to the National Honey Board and Mississippi State UniversityExtension Service for their assistance with this Ag Mag.

Johnny ThompsonBeekeeper

Broke T QueensPhiladelphia

What do you do? I sell honey bee queens to beekeepers. I also sell nucs, ornucleus colonies, which consist of a few thousand bees anda queen. My bees are shipped by UPS and the U.S. PostalService in special packaging that keeps them safe. I sell tosmaller beekeepers because the larger apiaries raise theirown queens. My customers are usually repeat customers whoare dividing their hives in half or in thirds and need a queenfor each of the additional hives. The demand for queens isgrowing as more people become interested in keeping bees.

Do you work full-time? I work from April to June and sell about 1,500 honey beequeens. If I could work year round, I could easily sell 5,000queens, but I farm with my family. We have eight poultryhouses and 250 head of mama cows. In addition, my parentssell raw honey through Broke T Honey to Whole Foods inJackson, Williams Brothers in Philadelphia and Earth Bountyin Meridian. They also sell to the Neshoba County Co-op andfrom their home. They bottle their own raw honey. Our beeoperation consists of 500 hives for honey and 432 hives forqueen production and nucs.

How do you raise multiple queens? I graft honey bee larvae into special queen cell cups that areaffixed to bars. The bars are placed in frames, and the framesare inserted into queenless cell builders containing lots ofworker bees. Since the hive doesn’t have a queen, the nursebees rush to feed the larvae a whole lot of royal jelly, aprotein-rich secretion from their glands. An excess of the royaljelly is needed to develop a queen.

Why do you work with bees, and what type of skills doyou need? I work with bees because they are fascinating. It takes aspecial person to succeed in beekeeping. With bees, you mustbe patient and willing to work hard. You must also be detailoriented because there are so many different things that needyour attention. In addition, the equipment is expensive, andsome people don’t want to make that investment. Plus, somepeople have a problem with being stung.

BEE INDUSTRY

BeeAgMag_Layout 1 6/2/15 2:17 PM Page 1