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A
Abdomen
The rear section of a insect body containing the digestive and reproductive organs.
Absconding
Departure from the hive by the entire colony.
Adulterated Honey
Any product labeled "Honey" or "Pure Honey" that contains ingredients other than honey but does not show these on the label. (Suspected mislabeling should be reported to the Food and Drug Administration.)
Afterswarm
A small swarm, usually headed by a virgin queen, which may leave the hive after the first or prime swarm has departed.
Alighting Board
A small projection or platform at the entrance of the hive.
American Foulbrood
A brood disease of honey bees caused by the spore-forming bacterium, Bacillus larvae.
Anaphylactic Shock
Constriction of the muscles surrounding the bronchial tubes of a human, caused by hypersensitivity to venom and resulting in sudden death unless immediate medical attention is received.
Anther
The part of the flower that contains pollen.
Apiarist
A beekeeper.
Apiary
A collection of managed bee colonies.
Apiculture
The science of beekeeping.
Apis Mellifera
The genus and species name for the honey bee. This name, given by Linnaeus in 1758, is Latin for honey bearer.
Automatic Uncapper
Automated device that removes the cappings from honey combs, usually by moving heated knives, metal teeth, or flails.
B
Bacillus Larvae
The bacterium that causes American foulbrood
Bee Blower
An engine with attached blower used to dislodge bees from combs in a honey super by creating a high-velocity, high-volume wind.
Bee Bread
A mixture of collected pollen and nectar or honey, deposited in the cells of a comb to be used as food by the bees.
Bee Brush
A brush or whisk broom used to remove bees from combs.
Bee Escape
A device used to remove bees from honey supers and buildings by permitting bees to pass one way but preventing their return.
Bee Metamorphosis
The three stages through which a bee passes before reaching maturity: egg, larva, and pupa.
Bee Space
Discovered in the mid.1800 and brought to the attention of the World by L.L.Langstroth this is the distance, 1cm., between combs that the bees prefer to live and work. Any less and the bees try to fill the gap with wax or propolis, any more and the bees build brace comb to use up the space. This simple realisation made the movable frame hive possible and created modern beekeeping.
Bee Tree
A tree with one of more hollows occupied by a colony of bees.
Bee Veil
A cloth or wire netting for protecting the beekeeper's head and neck from stings.
Bee Venom
The poison secreted by special glands attched to the stinger of the bee.
Beeswax
Waxy material produced by worker bees and used to build combs.
Benzaldehyde
A volatile, almond-smelling chemical used to drive bees out of honey supers.
Boardman Feeder
A device for feeding bees in warm weather, consisting of an inverted jar with an attachment allowing access to the hive entrance.
Bottom Board
The floor of a beehive.
Brace Comb
Comb built by the bees in any available spaces within the hive. Modern hives are designed to minimise brace comb which tends to fix parts of the hive together making it difficult to manipulate.
Braula Coeca
The scientific name of a wingless fly commonly known as the bee louse.
Brood
Developing bees (eggs, larvae, pupae) that have not yet emerged from their cells.
Brood Box
A deep box without top or bottom in which the frames hang in a moveable frame hive. This is where the Queen lays the eggs and some stores are kept.
Buff Comb
A bit of wax built upon a comb or upon a wooden part in a hive but not connected to any other part.
C
Cap
A covering that closes a cell containing pupa or honey.
Cell
One hexagonal unit in a comb, these are built from wax almost perfectly by the worker bees in complete darkness. The design of a cell is the perfect compromise of minimum weight to maximum strength and is admired by engineers the world over. The Queen lays an egg in each cell which is later capped with wax to allow the larvae to turn into a bee. Other cells are used to store honey and pollen.
Crystallization
Honey is a supersaturated solution. Crystals will develop in honey when glucose crystallizes out of solution. Crystallization of honey is most rapid at 57 F.
Colony
The name given to a collection of bees either in the wild or in a beekeepers hive. A healthy colony can contain up to 60,000 bees at the height of the Summer. A collection of bees all flying together is called a swarm.
Colony Division
Exiting of a part of a bee colony to form a new hive.
Comb
The place where bees are born and stores are kept, made up of hexagonal wax cells. Supported by a frame in modern hives. Cut comb is honey sold in a block of comb straight from the hive without using an extractor or jars.
D
Dance
A series of movements made by a forager bee or a scout bee to communicate the location and type of resource.
Drone
A fertile male bee, he does little work in the hive and is thrown out of the hive to die in the Autumn by the female workers. The Queen will mate in the air with several Drones who then die afterwards.
E
Entomology
The science of insects.
Extracted Honey
Liquid honey removed from large combs and sold in jars or cans.
Extractor
A machine driven by hand or motor, which spins the frames of comb and throws out the honey by centrifugal force. This allows the Beekeeper to put the empty frame back in the hive to be re-filled by the Bees saving them a lot of extra work.
F
Foraging
The act of gathering pollen and nectar from flowers by worker bees.
Forager Bee
A foraging worker bee.
Foundation
Thin sheets of beeswax imprinted with the pattern of honey cells by metal rollers then it is processed. These sheets are fastened into frames as "starters" for the bees in making the combs.
Frame
An open rectangle usually of wood into which a sheet of foundation is nailed. The bees use the foundation as a template to build their comb across the hive. The discovery of bee space in the mid 1800's made modern Beekeeping possible as removable frames with exactly the right distance apart enabled the beekeeper to examine and manipulate the colony.
H
Head
The front section of a insect body containing antennae and other sensory apparatus.
Hive
The home of the Honeybee provided by the Beekeeper. There are many different types of Hives some examples are called skeps, Nationals or WBCs. Modern hives consist of a brood box, supers and movable frames.
Hive Body
First two boxes placed on the bottom board. The hive bodies will contain the brood nest of the colony.
Honey
Produced by Bees in the hive by concentrating nectar over and over again. It is stored in cells to enable the Bees to survive through Winter without hibernating. The art of the Beekeeper is to encourage their Bees to produce a surplus of honey to extract and bottle.
Honey Bee
Bees are insects and belong to to the superfamily Apoidea and the order Hymenoptera. Before the colonisation of America only the stingless bee, family Meliponidae, existed in the Central and Southern Continent. The small quantity of wax and honey produced made it very valuable to the South American peoples. When white colonists introduced Honey Bees, native Indians called them "the white man's flys"..!
House Bee
A young worker bee whose activities are confined to the hive.
L
Larva
Grub-like, immature form of bee, after it has developed from the egg and before it has gone into the resting stage in preparation for the change to adult form.
Lift
The sloping slats that make up the sides of the traditional WBC hive. Many lifts can be stacked up to cover and protect the brood box and supers inside.
M
Mating Flight
An excursion taken by drones in order to mate with a queen.
Movable Frame Hive
Although tried by many inventors in many Countries the movable frame hive was first patented by L.L. Langstroth in 1851. Opening from the top with ten frames it allowed the beekeeper for the first time to remove, examine and re-position combs.
N>
National
The name given to the most popular style. The debate over a National standard for frame and hive size continued for years with everyone having their own preferences. Despite the standard now being established the debate still rumbles on ..!
Nectar
A sweet liquid produced within certain flowers as a attraction to insects. This co-operaton between plants and insects ensures the fertilisation of the flower to produce seed. Bees concentrate the nectar in the hive to produce honey and store it in 'cells'.
Nuptial Flights
A series of mating excursions made by a young queen.
O
Orientation Flights
Flights taken by house bees in preparation for becoming foragers.
P
Pistil
A flower's central organ that contains the stigma, style and ovary.
Pollen
Bees go from flower to flower gathering pollen and nectar as food. In doing so some pollen is passed from one flower to another thus fertilising or pollinating the plant. This is a vital part of agriculture and we would have very little food or countryside without bees.
Pollination
The transfer of pollen from an anther to a stigma of a flower.
Propolis
This is a sticky brown filler or type of glue that bees produce to seal gaps in the hive. it is made from many differing sources, the main one being tree sap. Propolis has many amazing antiseptic medicinal uses and is produced commercially for sale in tincture or tablet form.
Pupa
Immature form of bee during the resting stage while changing to the adult form.
Q
Queen
The only fertile female in the hive the Queen will lay up to 2000 eggs a day! After emerging from the Queen cell a Virgin Queen will feed and get used to the hive. After around a week she will fly from the hive to mate with several drones in the air. She will return to the hive never to leave unless the colony swarms. A Queen can live up to five years but often exhausts her supply of fertile eggs within three years.
Queen Cell
A special vertically hanging cell used to place an egg that will become a queen.
Queen Excluder
A metal grid placed between the brood box and super in a modern hive. The spaces are wide enough to allow worker bees to pass through with honey but are too narrow for the Queen to pass through and lay eggs.
R
Royal Jelly
Milky white secretion of young nurse bees that is fed to queen larvae throughout their lives, and to worker and drone larvae only during their early larval lives.
S
Schwirrlauf
A whir dance made by scout bees to announce the time for colony division.
Scout
A worker bee who fly's away from the colony or swarm to look for a new source of nectar or the site for a swarm to begin a new colony.
Skep
The traditional, round hive made of straw or rushes, few skeps are in use today as it is difficult to see between the comb built inside and attend to the bees. Skeps are still used to collect swarms by many Beekeepers today.
Skeppist
The name given to a Beekeeper who kept or still keeps Bees in skeps.
Spermatheca
A pouch-like stucture on a queen's abdomen for storing sperm.
Smoker
A container with a spout operated by a hand bellows. If a whiff of smoke is blown into a hive top and bottom the bees instinctively believe there is a fire nearby and fill their stomachs with honey from the nearest cell in case they have to escape and start a new home. This makes them reluctant to sting and easier to handle. The beekeeper fills the smoker with dry grass, leaves or their own secret smoker fuel!
Stamen
The male part of a flower where pollen-producing anther are borne.
Stinger
A 1/8 inch long hollow tube with a barbed tip attached to a pocket at the end of the abdomen used to eject venom.
Stores
A colony's larder, parts of the comb are filled with pollen and honey. The pollen is fed to the young bees as it is high in protein and carbohydrate. The honey is eaten by the bees to give them energy. Honey Bees do not hibernate, they have evolved to survive the Winter by storing surplus honey and pollen in the combs to eat during the cold weather.
Super
A shallow box without top or bottom in which the frames of comb hang in a moveable frame hive. A Queen excluder prevents the Queen from getting into the box yet allowing the worker Bees to store honey in the comb. This is where the Beekeeper finds the surplus honey to remove from the comb with an extractor.
Supersedure
When a colony with an old or failing queen rears a daughter to replace her.
Swarm
A colony of bees found outside the hive, may be absconding or in colony division.
T
Thorax
The middle section of an insect body to which the wings and legs are attached.
V
Varroa
A parasitic mite which lives on Bee larvae and adult bees. Introduced to Britain from Europe in the 1980's it is now impossible to destroy completely. Were it not for dedicated Beekeepers, bees would eventually die out before they could become resistant to the mite with catastrophic results for the pollination of crops.
W
Wax
Wax is produced in small plates by bees from glands along their body. These thin oval plates are chewed by the bees to soften them and then the wax is formed into comb.
W.B.C.
The initials of William Broughton Carr a beemaster of the late 18th Century. His WBC hive design was the most popular for hobby beekeepers in Britain and is now everybody's mental picture of a beehive. Usually painted white to reflect the sun, with overlapping planks or lifts for sides and a sloping roof. This design of hive still has its keen supporters but the many interlocking parts mean the National is now the most popular hobby hive.
Worker
A sterile female bee who performs all the functions necessary in the hive, all Honey Bees seen flying around flowers will be workers.
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