Everything But The Weed

Approved by:
Linda Maze, a Wedding photography Gainesville FL in Gainesville Florida

Though many people are knowledgeable about the significant role that honeybees play in the ecosystem, nests found in or near properties or offices could be frightening and unsafe for residents or employees. Today many bee removal services have to be familiar with the life cycle of bees, in addition to other factors, to be best equipped to handle the hives with the least damage and stress to the bees.

There are basically two types of pest removal services in the United States, those that kill all the bees and then remove the hive, and those that carry out all possible safety measures to preserve the lives of the bees, even while helping residence and business owners clear their buildings of undesirable pests. Environmentally conscious citizens usually pick the eco-friendly bee catcher businesses, who following removal will either give or sell all hives to beekeepers so the insects can be brought back to the fields to pollinate plantlife as soon as possible.

Honeybee life spans differ depending on a number of conditions such as:

•    the role each bee plays in keeping a hive healthy and functioning
•    the location where the hive is built
•    time of year when bees mature and start to take active responsibilities in the hive

These roles include the queen who is in charge of laying the eggs for the whole hive; the drones whose job is to fertilize the queen; and the worker bees who have tasks that include nourishing the queen, taking newly hatched bee larvae, gathering pollen and protecting the hive. Queen bees may live as old as two years, drones live long enough to mate with the queen; and a worker bee’s lifespan varies from 40 to 140 days based on the time of year.

In the spring, summer and autumn worker bees continue to be very active, primarily by collecting pollen for the creation of honey to feed the young. A strong queen can produce up 2000 eggs every day, which means the workers must look after all of those eggs to guarantee a strong hive. It’s not unusual for worker bees to actually be labored to death throughout these eventful months – resulting in a limited life cycle of only about 40 days. Some bees may be seen crawling about on the ground due to beating their wings to tatters, thus the worker bee is not able to go back to the hive.

In the damp, cold months of winter, a number of honeybee hives show a certain level of stress created by a shortage of incoming food–since plant life and crops are no longer producing pollen. A weak or aging queen that has decreased brood production could also create stress within a community as workers lack enough to do to stay occupied.

Proactive beekeepers will do everything they can to help hives thrive during the winter months so they can start the next production year with a healthy and vital hive. Aging queens are usually replaced with a stronger queen at this time of year. Even healthy queens need to have their diets supplemented, because the honey is removed for sale. Queens and workers alike are regularly given sweet syrup to keep her productive and the workers busy. Bee containers are occasionally wrapped to keep them temperate, dry, and free of ice. Since workers are not out foraging for pollens, winter hatched bees usually have a much longer life span than workers born in other times of year. Different bee species do better in cooler weather than others do. Beekeepers often transfer their hives to different environments for overwintering and keeping them as strong as possible for the  spring crop months to come.

Beekeepers who are educated about the life span of bees and the requirements of specific species will have a better comprehension of how to handle an unwelcome hive found in someone’s house or on company property, regardless of the season it is found. By managing the bees in a manner that does them no injury, a productive hive can be put to work in another area, providing an environmental benefit to the community at large.