I decided to go on a voyage of self reflection and ponder the most common questions I am asked as a beekeeper, and construct answers which would not only allow me to better understand people’s curiosity (and fears) associated with bees, but also potentially teach some people who may stumble upon this page a thing or two about bees. I will update this post from time to time, if I find a different question keeps popping up, but ultimately this is aimed at people unfamiliar with bees or beekeeping. If you are a beekeeper yourself and wish to contribute, or have a question which is not answered here, please shoot me an email at beebenefactor@gmail.com.

For ease of reference, I have ranked these questions in descending order of how often I am asked them…

1. Do you get stung? Have you ever been stung? (etc.)

Short answer: yes.

I have a feeling that people are often the most perplexed by the fact that someone would keep a whole box full of stinging insects, and fairly regularly stick their hands inside of that box. I know people have a similar reaction to people who keep snakes (i.e. “do you ever get bitten?”), and I think it is a primal instinct we have based on fear and unfamiliarity which makes this the most asked questions. I will literally walk right up to a hive and stick my face right up to the entrance with no protective gear on, with the knowledge that I have a relatively low chance of getting attacked by the bees. People who are often accompanying me at the time, who usually have little to no experience with bees, will stand a good five to ten metres away, peering cautiously at the hive (in the same way that people peer at a a suspected bomb, I would imagine). It does little to comfort them to see me right up close, because I often think that people believe I am crazy.

For the record, I am not (currently) overly allergic to bee stings (I won’t die or need a hospital when stung), but I still hate getting stung as much as the next person. Nature designed it to hurt, but beekeepers I know see it as a part of the experience. 99% of the time, people (including beekeepers) are stung because they did the wrong thing. Whether it is because you have just sprayed a bee with a poison, knocked a hive as you were mowing past it, it is highly likely that the bees stinging you are doing so in response to something you have done. There are exceptions to the rule, but out of the countless times I have been stung, I have never been stung “randomly” or for something that wasn’t “my fault.” The other factor is that if you instantly remove the stinger from your skin in the correct manner, you usually do not experience the full effect of the sting.

Beekeepers are generally stung because they are manipulating the insides of a hive (in a manner not dissimilar to how a large predator devours the inside of a hive), which results in the bees becoming defensively aggressive. Even then, beekeepers come up with techniques (usually by trial and error, or taught by a mentor) which allow them to manipulate a hive in a calm and controlled manner, and minimises the risk of the bees being alerted by their actions. There is also anecdotal evidence to suggest that keeping bees in Langstroth style hives has the propensity to make bees naturally more aggressive (which I have not 100% decided on whether I agree with yet).

I will finish this question on a final note that bees do not WANT to sting anyone. Honeybees are one of the few species which dies after stinging (mammals) which I will cover in a question below. But every bee that a hive loses, is a bee that could have been used to make or collect honey (or pollen), and therefore it is not in a hive’s best interest for a bee aggressively sting unless they perceive a direct threat to the hive or themselves. This is in contrast to many types of wasp or hornet  which would sting you for merely being in the general area of their nest. This is because they are able to do so multiple times without dying, and therefore the cost of this behaviour is fairly low.

2. Does your suit prevent bees from stinging you?

Short answer: no.

Again, another sting related question. “A good tradesman never blames his tools” is a common phrase I hear, and I believe that this applies to beekeeping too. It is very hard to describe the feeling you get when you suddenly get engulfed with a whole hive of angry bees; if I had to put it to words, I would say a mixture of adrenaline fueled focus and panic. Suits come if an endless number of configurations, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. There is no such thing as the perfect suit. This means that give bees enough time, and enough reasons to want to sting you, and they will find a way. I have had bees climb through a small gap in the ankles of a full body suit, and climb all the way up to my face and sting me. To be fair to that bee, at the time I was cutting its colony out of a house wall, and they were all very upset with me.

I have also been stung through the material of a suit (on many occasions). “Wait, what is the point of having a suit on if you can get stung through it?!” I hear you exclaim. Well, concerned reader, beekeeping suits have two primary functions: to make it “difficult” for bees to sting you, and to make it easy for a beekeeper to remove the stings they might receive through the suit. This is due to the weave of the fabric, which makes it so simply ruffling the bee suit will pull out the sting (which I will explain the importance of in a later questions).

The other point I will submit is that the more protection you wear, the hotter, heavier and less mobile you will be. This severely impacts your ability to calmly work with the bees, as you are pouring with sweat and unable to feel your surroundings through your suit. You end up making mistakes, and the bees do not appreciate mistakes. I often talk with and read about (very experienced) beekeepers who wear little (or no) protection, and receive very few stings, because they are better able to work with the bees and limit the amount of mistakes they make. I have even bought cheap “thin” beekeeping suits from eBay before which are very cool and easy to wear, but offered little protection from very angry bees.

The other thing to remember is that bees are commonly attracted to their alarm pheromone, vibrations, carbon dioxide, hair, and dark colors when choosing a target to sting. This comes from an instinct to sting big, hairy, carbon dioxide exhaling predators, but also means that big, hairy carbon dioxide breathing faces of beekeepers become a prime target. This means that I will normally don face or head protection in the form of a veil or net as a minimum when working with most hives. If I am doing extensive manipulations involving removing multiple frames, I like to wear a full suit as a precaution, but I have technically gotten away with wearing long sleeve garments, trousers and head protection before. It is a purely personal choice for the beekeeper, and usually changes with practice and confidence. Interestingly, one of the alarm pheromones mentioned above is release upon a bee stinging, which causes more bees to rush to sting the same target.

As you remember from question one, the important thing to remember is that bees do not sting without a good reason. A beekeeping suit provides an obstacle between you and the bee, but this is merely to prevent bees from instantly being able to sting you, and prevents a beekeeper from receiving a great number of stings. The best thing you can do to prevent being stung is to treat the hive with respect, be aware when you need to use methods to control the bees (e.g. smoke, water spray, etc), and assess the overall demeanour of your hive prior to opening them.

3. Does a bee really die when they sting you?

Short answer: yes (if she is a honey bee).

The first thing I am going to recommend you do is read this page on the evolution of the bee stinger (at the very least, go and look at the pictures). As mentioned, the bee stinger in an inherited evolution of an egg laying device, and was not originally designed for stinging at all. Over millions of years, the bee stinger changed shape and developed a “digging” function using little tools called “lancets”. Honeybees developed very rough lancets which are difficult to remove from many types of skin, and causes the and the organs which pump venom to be ripped from the abdomen of the bee as she tries to escape, which proves to be a fatal injury. These organs keep pumping venom even when removed from the bee, and thus it is very important to remove a bee stinger from your skin as soon as possible. Do not bother fumbling around with your wallet, trying to find a credit card to remove the stinger, just use your nail to scrape the stinger off and save yourself precious time.

The very astute amongst you may have noticed that I used the terms “she” and “honeybee” very tactically in the paragraph above. This is simply because only female bees (and wasps) have the apparatus to sting (because of the egg laying factor explained above) and most other types of bee (excluding the honeybee) and most wasps have smoother lancets, which can be retrieved without injury after depositing venom. This means that many species of bees and wasp will be able to sting you and live to fight another day. The other misconception which is commonly held is that honeybees ALWAYS die when they sting ANYTHING. This is simply not the case, and animals or insects with thinner skin types can see the honeybee remove her sting without injury.

4. Are the bees really becoming endangered?

Short answer: yes, but there are many many factors.

I have touched on multiple topics already regarding bees and their disappearance, death, and how we can try to help them. The one thing that I always finding myself having to remind people is that the term “honeybee” applies to only a very small number of the many thousand species of bee out there. There are over 19,000 species of bees (more species than all mammals and birds combined), and the grand majority of bees are “solitary” and do not make hives or honey. Many people mistake them for flies or wasps, but they play a huge role in pollinating the planet, and are unfortunately the ones that are in the most danger. To date, Australia has been relatively unaffected by several of the international bee crises which have seen honeybee colonies disappearing or dying in massive numbers, and many species of solitary bees are thought to be extinct (or seriously endangered). Honeybees alone have had to deal with the spread of pests (Australia has thus far avoided a nasty mite called Varroa) including wax moth, small hive beetle, American and European Foulbrood. Bees generally have had to cope with the increase in use of pesticides (particularly Neonicotinoids), extreme loss of habitat due to urban sprawl and “bee unfriendly” gardens. The main reason why the honeybee are not considered to be likely to become extinct is that humans have developed methods to manage hives and prevent that from happening. This is not the case for the other 19,000+ species, which will likely fade from existence without significant intervention.

5. What happens to a hive if the Queen dies?

Short answer: they make another one (if they can).

I think the main reason people have trouble processing this, is because they think that the Queen “rules” the hive, and because she is the only one which lays eggs, the hive must simply be doomed if she dies. If you start to think about it thought, this does not make a lot of evolutionary sense, as Queen bees die all of the time (e.g. being eaten whilst mating, or killed during a predator attack). I doubt honey bees would be around today if their survival hinged solely on the Queen. In reality, the Queen serves more as an “egg laying and pheromone” machine created by the Worker bees. They do this by feeding an egg (or sometimes young larvae) a highly concentrated diet of a substance called “royal jelly.” This diet influences the development of the larvae and causes the creation of a Queen (instead of a Worker).

This process will also occur sometimes in situations where the current Queen is underperforming due to age or deformity. The Workers will sense that the Queen needs replacing and create one (or multiple) new Queens to “supercede” the old one. A process similar to this also happens when the hive “swarms,” or sends a portion of the hive to create a new hive somewhere else.

This doesn’t mean that a Queen isn’t very important to the hive, she is very important! A Queen produces pheromones which unify the hive, and give the worker bees a distinct “scent” which allows them to identify bees from other hives and stop them from entering the hive. Honeybees will also naturally try to follow their Queen, which makes her very useful to beekeepers, who are looking to perform various functions with the hive. A Queen that is unhealthy or unproductive can sometimes doom a hive, by not creating enough new bees to sustain the hive into the future (especially if the Workers do not create a new Queen in time). They can also occasionally lay too many male “drone” eggs into the colony, which I will explain why that is bad in a later question.

6. Does smoke really make bees drowsy?

Short answer: no.

If anything, smoke makes bees panic. Smoke triggers a survival response in bees, making them think that a bush fire is coming. Instead of worrying about the person who is opening their hive, the bees suddenly start worrying about saving their precious honey and start to gorge themselves with it. They do this in preparation of abandoning the hive if the fire were to get any closer. I have read before that bees “full of honey” are also less capable of stinging, due to them not being able to freely move their abdomen. Applying smoke to a hive greatly disturbs the fluid operation of the hive, and the colony can take

Smoke does not work on bees that are swarming to a new home, as they have no hive to protect. Swarming bees are already pretty docile, anyway, any using smoke on them (in my experience) has little to no effect, and sometimes aggravates them. As a side note: bees do sleep (kind of) however this seems to be linked to daily cycles and exposure to light, more so than anything to do with smoke.

7. Does honey really have health benefits?

Short answer: yes (but it really depends on the honey)

As a general rule, honey in general is seen to have various anti-bacterial properties. This is quite often attributed to the honey being very low on moisture (the bees evaporate roughly 46% of the mass from the nectar they collect as water vapor) which does not allow many microbes to grow. I have also heard that honey sourced from specific types of plants (e.g. tea tree, or manuka) have increased antibacterial and medical properties, but the scientific backing of these claims are limited. There is also a lot of discussion on the topic of “processed” verses “raw” honey, relating to a lot of the health benefits being lost in the “treating” of processed honey (see: heat denaturing).

Honey contains minerals at very small quantities (0.17%) with potassium as the most abundant. Others are calcium, copper, iron, manganese, and phosphorus. Vitamins C, B (thiamine) and B2 complex like riboflavin, nicotinic acid and B6 pantothenic acid are also found.

This is not to say that honey is perfectly microbe free or safe (not many things are). It is generally not considered safe to give honey to infants under the age of one, due to some of the microbes in honey being able to take over a youngster’s digestive system. Honey that has not been correctly harvested, stored, or handled may contain higher amounts of moisture, which in turn allows the honey to ferment (and become inedible). This can generally be avoided by only taking honey from capped cells, and using clean and controlled harvesting equipment.

There is a popular belief that honey sourced from the area which you live may help relieve allergy symptoms by desensitising you to small amounts of local pollen (however this is not proven with science and in usually not recommended by doctors). Some people are actively allergic to honey, and those suffering from diabetes should not try to substitute sugar with honey (as they both influence blood sugar levels).

8. How much honey do you get from a hive?

Short answer: it depends on lot of things.

It is quite difficult to fully communicate the vast number of things which affect honey production. There is an extensive discussion to be had about the many different “types” of honeybee, many of which produce different amounts of honey. There also very generic factors that are within and out of the beekeepers control.

Factors the beekeeper can control:

• Location of bees in relation to good nectar sources
• Feeding bees at the correct time
• Ensuring there is enough space for the bees to fill with honey
• Utilising foundation frames
• Positioning bees in areas where there is high competition
• Etc

Factors which the beekeeper cannot control:

• Extended periods of bad weather
• Extended Winter conditions
• The general climate of the beekeepers locality
• Local nectar sources not flowering
• Pesticides used in local area killing forager bees,
• Etc

There is also the simple fact that some beekeepers do not take a lot (or any) honey from their bees, and do it for the simple love of the hobby and respect for the organism. But, to give you a rough figure, an average beehive of Italian honeybees anywhere from twenty seven kilograms to ninety kilograms of honey. It is a common sentiment amongst beekeepers that “your bees will produce all the honey you could ever eat, and then some” or words to that effect.

9. Have you seen that new hive which allows you to take honey without opening the hive?

Short answer: yes, it is called the Flow Hive (but there is a lot of debate about them)

The Flow Hive is arguably one of the biggest bee related campaign which blew up on social media. I think it very successfully captures people’s imagination, and allows people to envisage a world where honey can be taken with almost no chance of being stung (and if I have learnt anything from compiling this list, it is that people hate stings). I have seen many arguments for the flow hive, including that it makes beekeeping more accessible and popular as removes a large portion of the amount a person has to lift. It also allows beekeepers to conduct a large part of their work without disturbing the bees, which creates less stress on the colony. I certainly feel that these attributes are fantastic, and anything which increases people’s awareness of bees is a win in my opinion.

Unfortunately (like anything) this convenience potentially comes at a price. Firstly, flicking a switch for fresh honey adds a temptation that isn’t really present in other beekeeping hives, and potentially creates a situation where hives can be accidently over harvested and therefore unable to survive a harsh winter. This can, of course, happen in other hive types too,but ultimately is less accessible and therefore more difficult to “accidentally” starve your hive. Responsible beekeeping practices and feeding methods can easily mitigate these risks, however to a novice beekeeper starting out with a Flow Hive, these practices may not be evident and could end in disappointment.  The other major factor is that it can potentially foster a “lazy” beekeeper mentality. Often I find problems with my hives by accident, opening them up and seeing something odd and researching it. By not opening your hive and looking at what “normal” looks like, it can be difficult to identify when there is something wrong and trying to fix it. I certainly am not saying you need to open your hive every week or anything, but certainly having one fewer reason to open the hive may contribute to a situation where inspections are too few to do any good.

In the short time I have been following various Flow Hive groups on social media, I have notices a lot of people saying that “the bees will not go up into the top box” and therefore are not putting honey into the Flow frames. The fix to this problem is very simple, and highlights to me that this type of hive should not be marketed to “beginner” beekeepers, but more experienced or commercial beekeepers who understand how bees work and therefore overcome certain elements of the hive’s design. I fear that those without mentors may grow frustrated with their hive, especially if it takes months (or years) for their bees to naturally start filling their Flow frames.

The disclaimer I will include is that there are a lot of “beekeeping styles” which revolve around not interacting with the beehive internally, and leaving the bees completely alone unless absolutely necessary (see Warre hives, skeps, etc). Even in this situation though, good beekeepers will still inspect the outside of the hive, take in the sights, smells and sounds of a healthy hive and try to identify problems that way.  The other major factor is that being a Langstroth base design of hive, the Flow Hive (in my humble opinion) requires a good amount of internal inspection, as per any normal commercial beekeeping hive.

10. Can I buy some honey from you?

Short answer: very rarely.

I started beekeeping approximately 8 years ago, and am still driven purely by my fascination of the organism and the superorganism (the individual bees and the colony respectively). I am in the great position of having a full time job, which allows me to put money into my beekeeping hobby without requiring financial reward from the bees. Unfortunately I find that “conventional beekeeping” in Australia is seen as the “only way to do it.” As a beginner, you will likely spend a few hundred dollars assembling a Langstroth hive, and even more on various items of equipment, which are built to mirror commercial hives and equipment respectively. From this position, you are often tempted by the notion that you can sell honey (etc) to make your money back on your hobby. Whilst I don’t have a problem with this concept in isolation, it is very rare that beginner beekeepers are exposed to other types of beekeeping early on, and therefore they often get caught in the position where they feel that this is the only way to keep bees. I can tell you now that bees can offer you a lot of intangible benefits, not to mention free pollination of your yard, all of which are rarely communicated to new beekeepers.

The concept of “apicentric” beekeeping (sometimes called “natural” beekeeping) is where the beekeeper focuses solely on the health and wellbeing of their colonies, and less on getting physical or financial rewards from the bees. If you go into beekeeping with the mindset that you will make money, you will likely become frustrated and disenchanted with the process, as it takes a lot of time, effort and heavy lifting to create the quantities requires to turn a large profit from your hives. It also takes a large amount of type, usually a minimum of a twelve month season, to get your bees established to handle commercial practices. This is all even before we discuss losing hives to pests and seasons, which in turn weighs on the profitability of a venture. I would strongly encourage people to try apicentric beekeeping for a while, at the very least until you find your feet, and focus on what you can do to help out the bees.

I personally only ever harvest honey for two reasons; I have (accidently or intentionally) cut out comb with honey in it and collect the honey which spills, or if they hive is being moved and there are extra frames of honey which the bees do not need. I hand press all of the honey I collect, and even with this in mind, I still receive enough honey for my personal consumption, and a bit for friends and family to try and buy. I may expand further in the future to incorporate a some local honey selling, but ultimately I do not need to do this to get fulfillment from my hives. Simply having the pleasure of interacting with them is my reward, and the honey is always secondary.