Iowa Honey Queen shares the buzz about bees

More than two dozen people were on hand to learn about honey bees and the many products they help produce from Iowa Honey Queen Carly Rae Vannoy on Saturday at the Newton Arboretum.

An event hosted by Project AWAKE, Vannoy shared why bees are important, how to care for bees and the future of bees throughout the world.

A self proclaimed bee nerd Vannoy, the daughter of Scott and Carole, has been beekeeping for three years. She enjoys doing hive inspections with her parents, reading beekeepings books and giving presentations about honey bees.

Vannoy started her presentation by describing the honey bee itself and the many unique traits it possesses.

“The honey bee has a lot of distinctive traits,” Vannoy said. “Right off the bat is the number of wings, there are two wings on each side with a little clasp in between them and the honey bees can use that in flight to make the four wings into two. If you have ever heard of making a “bee line” when the bee is trying to go one place as fast as they can, that is when they use the clasp.”

She explained there are three types of honey bees, the worker, the drone and the queen. Each type has specific duties in the colony such as worker bees who are all female and are responsible for feeding the larvae, tending to the queen, cleaning the hive, collecting food, guarding the colony and building honeycomb.

Drones are male bees whose sole purpose is to mate with the queen. The queen herself is the mom of all of the bees and has the ability to lay about 1,500 eggs a day during the spring and summer.

“Queens are fed very special food, royal jelly. Some people think that only the queen bee gets royal jelly, but all bees get royal jelly. The difference with the queen is she only gets royal jelly,” Vannoy said. “In fact, she is fed so much that there is usually some left over. It is the difference between a worker and a queen. Royal jelly works to basically turn on genes in the queen bee as she is developing.”

Vannoy explained the process the bees go through in order to produce honey, including extracting nectar from flowers, creating the honey in the hive and capping it off to reduce moisture. She also spoke about the work of beekeepers to produce honey for the greater public to enjoy.

“In the summer, we have two boxes where the bees can raise their brood and make their food,” Vannoy said. “When the boxes are full with “their space” with the babies and honey supply, bee keepers will add their own space through a super box.”

The super box is used to collect honey for the keepers and also keeps the honey bees busy as their boxes fill up. To extract the honey, keepers take the super boxes to a “honey nest” cut the cappings off and load them into an extractor. The extractor spins the honey out of the honey comb in a very efficient way.

“The reason we extract the honey is partially because it gets us the liquid product as efficiently as possible but is also allows us to give the honeycomb back to the bees,” Vannoy said. “It all goes back to the idea of efficiency because for bees it takes about eight pounds of honey to make pound of bees wax, it is really nice to be able to give them back the honey comb.”

To conclude her presentation, Vannoy spoke about the importance of saving the bees and other pollinators in our environment.

“Honey bees are an indicator species that, if they are dying, then something might be going wrong,” Vannoy said.

While the initial effects of honey bees dying out may not be immediately felt, Vannoy said there are many products, such as coffee and almonds, that would see an impact to production without the honey bee around to help.

“It’s the fun stuff and we want to be able to enjoy a diverse, rich, colorful diet,” Vannoy said.

To help with the effort to save the honey bee, Vannoy stressed the importance of diverse habitats for the bees. Whether it is a large garden full of a variety of plants and flowers or just a couple of potted flowers, any new and different habitats are helpful for the bees.

For more information about honey bees, contact the Iowa Honey Producers at www.iowahoneyproducers.org.

Contact Jamee A. Pierson at 641-792-3121 ext. 6534 or jpierson@newtondailynews.com