The Diet of Honey Bees

Honey bees are vegetarians; their diet consists of nectar, pollen, and water.
 
The flowers bees visit typically have a delicate, sweet scent. Violet or blue flowers are often their favorite, as they are the most rewarding flower colors in many habitats. When foraging, bees focus exclusively on one type of flower. (This exclusivity is what allows honey producers to market their honey as a specific type of honey). What they gather from the flowers depends on the needs of the hive. If more pollen is needed, house bees take pollen from the foragers, mostly ignoring those foragers with nectar or water. A lackluster reception at the hive encourages foragers to switch to the food source choice of the house bees. 

The diets of workers, queens, and drones are entirely dissimilar. Brood food recipes for each of the three castes involve differing ratios of the two glandular products (each is the product of bees of a different age); a quantity of honey is then added, the amount being caste dependent. While all larvae are fed royal jelly, the worker and drone diet is downgraded after 3 days in quantity and to a lesser quality of food known as bee bread. Royal jelly, which is fed to the queen larvae for the entire larval stage, is a combination of high-protein pollen, high-carbohydrate honey, and enzymes produced by nurse bees. Bee bread is a combination of honey and pollen. Bee bread is also consumed by adult bees. Cannibalism of eggs and larvae, which occurs during periods of dearth (food scarcity), can preserve the colony by conserving vital nutritional elements.

A colony needs at least 100 lbs of honey and pollen to survive winter. A good honey year can give the beekeeper an excess of honey (over the bees winter needs) of 50 to 100 or more pounds of honey. Keep in mind that a single bee produces only about 1/12 of a teaspoon in her lifetime, and that bees have so few weeks out of the year to collect and produce that bounty.

The Bee Dance

Foraging efficiency involves hive mate recruitment.  Upon discovering a new source, the forager returns and communicates the richness and location of the new source through dancing. The faster the dance, the richer the source.  She also provides the flower's scent, which other bees use to find the flowers. There may be many dances being performed at any given time, so the forager has to convince her sister foragers, her location is the best. A sizeable foraging group can be recruited within minutes.

The forager bee communicates the distance with either the waggle or round dance.The rate of looping and duration of buzzing indicate the distance to the food supply.

The waggle dance is used to communicate the location of food sources more than 35 yards away. The dance consists of two loops with a straight run in the middle. The direction of the straight run determines the direction of the food source. 

The round dance is used when the food source is less than 35 yards away. The forager bee turns in circles alternately to the left and to the right. The richer the food source, the longer and more vigorous the dance. The round dance does not communicate any specific direction.

 

 

Good hive management may require the beekeeper to feed the hive with sugar.  Bees have no way of relaying the information of a feeder within the hive. Each individual bee has to find it on her own.  Scenting the sugar with essential oils help the bees locate this food source.

Nectar

Bees forage for nectar which they mix with invertase, the bee enzyme found in salivary secretions that convert nectar to honey. The nectar is then stored in cells in the comb.  When the moisture content has dropped below 18%, the bees cap the cell, now containing honey,with fresh wax. 

Pollen

Bees also gather pollen. Pollen varies in color dependant on the plant it is gathered from. The bees electro-statically charged body hairs attract the pollen. The bee then uses its legs to scrape the pollen off its hairs and pack it into the pollen sacks on its hind legs. Back at the hive the bee transfers the pollen to a house bee who rams the pollen into cells with her head. When the cell is mostly full, it is topped off with honey which acts as a preservative and capped with fresh wax.

Higher numbers of brood in the colony stimulates the foragers to collect higher amounts of pollen. Pollen eating age in the worker bees ranges from emergence to 18 days old. However, the maximum amount of pollen consumption occurs when bees are 5 days old.

While some pollen is consumed, most is mixed with small quantities of honey or nectar and possibly salivary products and packed into cells adjacent to the brood nest where it undergoes a chemical change to a product called bee bread, so named because of its bready taste.   Bee bread is sometimes called ambrosia (the food of the gods). This product is stored until consumed by adult bees for conversion into glandular larval food, a kind of "mother's milk ". Bee bread is the principal food of the adult nurse bees. Nurse bees eat and convert bee bread into at least two different glandular secretions, which are then fed to bee larvae. For more information on bee bread: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1200/is_n19_v134/ai_6809486

Water

Bees also gather water.  Honey bees need water to cool the hive and to dilute the honey they to feed their young. They generally collect it from the nearest source.  During hot weather, bees spread the water throughout the colony in droplets. They then cool the hive by evaporating the drops of water. The bees accomplish this by fanning the air with their wings. This air movement evaporates the water which effectively lowers the hive temperature. Approximately five gallons are required to hydrate and cool the colony each year.

for more information on the bee diet:
http://www.agf.gov.bc.ca/apiculture/factsheets/410_nutrition.htm
http://maarec.cas.psu.edu/bkCD/HBBiology/nutrition_supplements.htm

 

Good Nectar and Pollen Plants of Utah

Alfalfa is the chief honey producing crop of Utah, with the clovers being the second major honey producing crop.  Yellow clover is an invasive weed, and should not be sown. Spring generally arrives late with alfalfa blossoms not occurring until May or later. The first cutting is usually not allowed to bloom in effort to control the alfalfa weevil. The second crop blooming late July/ August provides most of the forage. Clover blossoms from May through November in Utah. The book, Nectar and Pollen Pants of Utah, by W.P. Nye contains an extensive list of plants that bees frequent.  The list also tells what region of Utah they are found in and when they bloom.  Following is an abbreviated list of the major nectar and pollen plants of Utah.