Spring and the work steps-up for both the beekeepers and the bees. The beekeepers carry out 3 tasks:

1. Spring feeding – Beekeepers feed their bees a sugar syrup until the plums, clover and chokecherry bushes bloom.
2. Medicate for mites – We check each hive to gage if the varroa mite load warrants mediation (and most certainly it does) then medicate the hive to lessen the number of varroa mites.
3. Check queen health – check the health of the queen by noticing the patterns of the sealed brood on the frames. At this time decisions are made concerning replacing the queen. If the hive looks healthy and with plenty of worker bees, sometimes we split this hive, a process involving buying a queen and starting a new hive with her plus several frames of brood and the nurse bees that cling to the frames.. 

A bee hive consists of one queen, drones and thousands of worker bees. Each has a part in the life of the hive. The queen controls the population of the hive, the drones fertilize the future queens in the region, and do nothing to support the work of the hive.

What is a bee’s work? Have you heard anyone say, “Busy as a bee.” The following list of tasks (I’m certain bees do even more than on this list) that bees handle will illustrate the accuracy of this description:

The Work of the Worker Bees

1. Young bees called nurse bees clean cells, feed larvae, construct comb and ripen the nectar.
2.  Later these bees graduate into field bees. They collect nectar and pollen, regulate the hive temperature, forage for water to drink and cool the nest, defend the colony, remove sick or dead bees from the hive, collect sticky plant resins called propolis and place it around the hive to seal small gaps and cover rough surfaces.

I consider beekeeping a lot of work and responsibility yet compared to the day of the average bee, the beekeeper has the short end of this stick.