What's new on the farm:
"What do honeybees eat in the winter?"
I often get asked this question when people find out we have bees.
An entire honeybee colony lives year-round whereas other bees and wasps do not.
This difference is why we eat honey from honeybees and not from, let's say, bumblebees.
You see, bumblebees make honey too! And so do wasps. And many other bee species.
These insects don't need to sustain their populations all year round. Usually, only the queen survives the winter.
That means that they make just enough honey to last them into the fall before they all perish.
Honeybees, however, need to keep a population of 10,000-30,000 bees alive until the spring.
What's their main source of food?
Honey, of course!
The honey that gets stored in the combs crystallizes and gets hard.
So the honeybees use their body heat to keep themselves warm, but also to warm up the honey so that they can eat it.
The need to store away honey for the winter is the reason why honeybees produce so much honey in the summer.
Here in Saskatchewan, you can get yields of over 300 pounds per hive of excess honey. This is among the highest in the world.
Meanwhile, the bees only consume 60-70 pounds or less during the winter.
It's their instinct that drives them to keep working beyond the 70 pounds to "make hay while the sun shines."
That's why beekeepers can get honey from honeybees - because they make excess honey!
However, it's always important to balance what we can take.
Some years we aren't able to take as much from the hives because of drought or poor nectar flow. The excess yield from each hive is less those years.
We always make sure they are always left with the honey they need. The priority is for the bees to stay healthy and strong.
