The mites feed on the blood (called hemolymph) of adult bees and developing pupae, much like a tick feeds on animal blood. The mites ride around on "nurse bees," which feed bee larvae. When a mite on a bee walks over a 5th instar larva, the mite drops off the bee and enters the cell containing the larva. The mite "hides" in the food at the bottom of the cell under the larva until the bees cap over the cell with wax. The larva then spins a cocoon. Once she begins pupating, the mite starts feeding on her, and then lays eggs. The first egg, a male egg, is laid 60 hours after the cell is sealed, and female eggs are laid every 30 hours after that. The mite offspring and the mother all feed on the pupa at the same "feeding trough," which is opened and kept open by the mother mite.

When the mites feed on the pupa, they weaken it. The developing bee weighs less as an adult, has a lower protein content, can have deformed wings, and doesn't live as long. Eventually, if the majority of the workers in a colony are these compromised adults, the colony will simply collapse. This usually happens in winter, when the bees need to live several months inside the colony.

"Brood" is a generic term for immature stages of bees: eggs, larvae, and pupae.

I read a book when I was 18 called Bees Ways. I stayed up all night reading it. I couldn't believe that some insects were social and that some people (beekeepers) interacted with their bee colonies like pets. I had to see it to believe it, so I went to work for a commercial beekeeper.

All bees are important insect pollinators of agricultural crops, native ecosystems, and home gardens. Without bees, particularly honeybees, we would lose an estimated 1/3 of our diet. Even the dairy industry is indirectly dependent on honeybees because they pollinate alfalfa, which is feed for beef and dairy cattle. So bees are important.

Beekeepers (and farmers in general) use many pesticides to control insect pests. But insects develop resistance to these chemical treatments very quickly, making them ineffective. Beekeepers started using pesticides in their colonies to kill the mites. (It's tricky because they want to kill the mites, not the bees, and mites and bees are related!) But the mites have evolved resistance to the pesticides, and now the mites are reproducing unchecked. Putting pesticides into a bee colony is not a long-term solution, and risks contaminating bee products (honey and beeswax) besides. So it is very important to reduce the amount of pesticides used in bee colonies (and in all of agriculture!).

My goal is to breed bees that are resistant to diseases and mite pests so beekeepers don't have to use pesticides, and so we can keep our bee pollinators healthy and able to defend themselves.

It's rewarding that we've bred a line of bees that can defend themselves against diseases and mites, and are not reliant on beekeepers' inputs (chemicals/treatments) for their survival. It's also rewarding that many beekeepers are using resistant lines of bees (ours, and others) and trying to get off the "chemical treadmill."

We're working to make our line of bees more resistant to the mite pests. We are also working on developing a simple but accurate method to sample a colony of bees for mites so beekeepers can determine if they need to treat a colony or not. This is an Integrated Pest Management approach: only treat if mites are over a certain economic threshold.

I assume by "wood bee" you mean "carpenter bee"? Carpenter bees are not very common here. They nest in stems or in wood. They are solitary bees, meaning they do not live in a colony.

Honey bees are very common and can be easily found foraging on many flowers. Try looking on dutch clover in your front lawn or nearby park. Wild honey bee colonies are not common anymore due to the effects of the Varroa mite, but there are many beekeepers that keep managed honey bee colonies within the Twin Cities and throughout the entire state of MN.

Only bumblebee queens survive the winter. They hibernate in the ground until late April to early June. When they emerge from hibernation, they find a nest site in the ground, collect pollen, and lay eggs to begin a colony. By the end of the summer, the colony will consist of 50-200 bees, depending on the species of bumblebee, and they will produce new queens. After mating, the new queens will hibernate, and the rest of the colony dies off before winter.

There are many bee species and they are many different colors, ranging from metallic green and blue, to yellow and black stripes, to all black. All bees are fuzzy - the hairs help them collect pollen from flowers, which is their sole source of protein in their diet.

A baby bee emerges from her cocoon looking exactly the same as she will for the rest of her life. Once a bee emerges from her pupal cocoon, she is an adult bee.

Honey is nectar that bees collect from flowers. The bees add an enzyme to the nectar to break down the sugars, and they evaporate water from the nectar. When the water content is less than 18.6%, and it is stored in honey combs, it is honey.

The queen bee mates in the air with 10-20 male bees. She does this when she is 5-10 days old, and does not mate again for the rest of her life.

A colony reproduces itself by swarming. Half of the colony takes the mated queen and leaves the nest in search of a new nest site. The other half stay in the old nest and raise a new queen, who will take her mating flight when she is 5-10 days old.

Bees may be deformed or killed for many reasons, including diseases, viruses, pesticides, and old age.

Honey bees are fuzzy or hairy. Yellowjackets and hornets (both of which are kinds of wasps) are not fuzzy. Honey bees collect pollen to eat. Wasps are predators and eat insects and spiders.

The biggest bee is probably a bumblebee queen. She can be about 2 inches long.

Technically, a bee has one stomach for digestion. Bees also have a crop, which is more like a holding tank for the nectar they collect. No digestion happens in the crop, so it is not a true stomach.

Bees sting to defend themselves and their nest. They sting only in self-defense when they are disturbed.

No, most bee species are solitary. Only honey bees, bumblebees, some sweat bees, tropical stingless bees, and a few other species live in colonies.

The queen bee's abdomen is about 2-3 times as long as a worker abdomen because it is swollen with developing eggs. Her head and thorax are only slightly larger than worker bees.

Honey bees make their nests from wax, which they secrete from glands on the underside of their abdomen. The wax is secreted in small scales which the bees mold into honey combs. The combs consist of hexagonal cells. They build vertically hanging honey combs, and put their honey, pollen and brood in the cells.

An instar is a stage in a larva's life. Larvae must molt to grow. The stages between molts are called instars. Honey bees have 5 larval instars.

The Varroa mites feed on the bees' blood. These mites can only live on honey bees -- their existence is totally dependent on the honey bee.

A honey bee colony in Minnesota can make 100-200 pounds of honey in a summer.

I think honey bees are friendly.

Yes, some plants and animals are going extinct due to global warming, deforestation, agricultural practices, and human expansion in general.

In high school, I received a general education. I have a Bachelor's degree in Biology and a PhD degree in Entomology.

It is estimated there are at least 20,000 species of bees in the world.

Bees make honey from nectar they collect from various flowers, especially clover, alfalfa, and basswood trees in MN. Pollen is a source of protein for bees - they do not make honey from it.

Varroa mites came from Asia, and parasitized a different species of bee, Apis cerana. When beekeepers moved Apis mellifera into those parts of Asia, the mites jumped to the new host bee that had no defenses against the mites. The mites were able to build up to large populations within the bee colonies and eventually cause them to collapse.

The Varroa mite lives 2-3 months in the summer in MN, and can live 6 or months during the winter on adult honey bees.

Bees sting to defend their nest against intruders. Some people's immune system cannot handle bee venom-- those people don't produce the right kind of antibodies and they have allergic responses to the stings.

Bees don't "like" to attack and sting. Bees die after they sting. They only sting to defend their nest. If you swat at them, they need to defend themselves! Don't swat at them -- stay calm and they won't bother you.

Not true. They used to think that about bumblebees, but not anymore.

Mites spread when bees go into other colonies by accident or when they rob honey from weak colonies -- they pick up mites from the other colonies and take them home.

Bees produce, honey, pollen royal jelly, propolis, beeswax and bee venom.

Just honey bees.

Yes, bees have a brain, blood, and most everything we do (with variations), except bones.

It's really difficult to interpret what happened from the information you have given me. If you destroyed the hive (meaning killed all the bees in the colony), they could not have swarmed. If you simply closed off the entrance, you probably left lots of foraging bees outdoors. They could not get back in, and eventually died or drifted into other colonies. The yellow/brown droppings were probably bee feces - bees always defacate outside the nest.

Nothing. I enjoy having bees and wasps nest on my house because I know they are beneficial insects.

They don't learn. They dance instinctively.

Not generally. She is the egg layer and they need to protect her.

Hornets eat caterpillars, spiders and other insects that we consider pests. Hornets are very beneficial in keeping these pest insect populations in check.

They have stingers to defend themselves.

Sorry, I don't know what you mean. Species of bees? Colonies of honey bees?

There can be 40,000 to 50,000 honey bees in one colony.

From the Indo-European root, Bhei, or German word Biene.

In the summer, a worker bee usually lives 4-6 weeks. In the winter, a worker bee can live 4-6 months since she does not fly and wear herself out.

I assume you don't want an extremely technical answer to this question. All organisms develop resistance to things (like antibiotics and pesticides) that act on specific nerves or genes to harm them. They evolve physiological ways to cope with the pesticide so that it no longer affects them.

Bees have wax glands that can continually produce tiny flakes of wax, as long as there is sufficient nectar coming into the colony so that the wax glands in the bees are stimulated.

Bees don't talk. They communicate with chemical messages, called pheromones, and with movements and vibrations.

Yes, queen bees die, just like all living organisms. The worker bees in the colony can raise a new queen by feeding some young female larvae a special food we call royal jelly. This special diet triggers gene expression in the larva so it develops into a new queen bee for the colony.

Do you mean a food or other product that bees need to pollinate - like avacados or coffee? Or a product of a bee hive that people eat - like royal jelly or larvae?

The sugar content in honey is so high, it will not support the kind of bacterial growth that causes it to spoil. With time, the gentle flavors of honey may disappear, but the honey will not go "bad."

The queen is so full of eggs, and so busy laying eggs, she can't fly. She only flies on two occasions: when she takes her mating flight (when she is about 7 days old, before she starts laying eggs), and when the colony is so big, it swarms. Before the colony swarms, she stops laying eggs and loses weight so she can fly. The bees that stay behind in the nest raise a new queen.

Eggs mature in a queen bee's ovaries, and when they are mature, the eggs pass through oviducts and out of the queen through an opening at the tip of her abdomen.

This is not a true or false question! There is no central authority in a bee colony (or any social insect colony), and colony-level behaviors appear to be more than the mere summation of the behaviors of individual bees. In this sense, I think there is a "hive mind."

You can purchase them in the spring from B&B Honey Farm, in Houston, MN. Your can also purchase them from a MN beekeeper, Mark Sundberg from Fergus Falls. If you want 50 or more, you can purchase them from another MN beekeeper, Darrel Rufer. Order early for next year.

Female bees are a bit smaller and have stings. Male bees (drones) are a bit larger, more square looking, and don't have a stinger. You will only see females on flowers, as they are the only bees that forage. The vast majority of bees in a colony are female.

When a honey bee stings, her barbed stinger sticks in your skin, which rips the sting apparatus and part of her stomach out. She dies shortly after she stings. It hurts because of your body's response to the venom, which contains pain-inducing peptides, histamines, and other compounds that work on nerves to cause pain.

Buzzing is produced by the contraction of the bee's flight muscles, which can be very fast.

A healthy person (without heart problems for example) can withstand around 1000 stings before suffering mass envenomation (toxicity). However, other people, with compromised immune systems or other health problems, can only withstand 100-300 stings. If a person is known to have a systemic allergy to bee venom, they may not be able to tolerate one sting. However, these life-threatening allergic responses are not as common as people think. Most people think a large local reaction to a sting (massive swelling around the sting site) is a serious allergic reaction. Actually, that kind of swelling is quite normal and there is no need to worry.

I think bees are nice, friendly and cute already! Even if I could clone or "combine genetic codes" I couldn't produce a cuter bee than it already is.

After the honey combs are removed from a colony, a beekeeper opens the wax cappings over the honey comb cells with a hot knife, then spins the honey out of the comb using an extractor, which is like a big centrifuge (it spins like a washing machine). The honey is strained to remove wax particles and then bottled.

Different species of bees cannot interbreed. There can be many races = subspecies within a species, that can breed with each other. A breed of bees usually refers to a cross that humans have made within or among races - kind of like a plant variety. The most common races of bees in the US are Italian, Carniolan and most currently, Russian bees. From those, a number of breeds or varieties are being sold throughout the US.

Bees from the same colony usually don't fight with each other. If bees from one colony try to enter a different colony, there may be a fight. Yes, they can sting each other, and after stinging, the worker bee dies.

Nectar from flowers, which bees convert to honey, is their sole source of carbohydrate -- it is their food. They need about 75 lbs of honey to survive a winter in Minnesota.

It takes a worker bee 21 days to develop from egg to adult. It takes a queen bee only 15-16 days to develop into an adult. A male bee, a drone, takes 24 days to develop.

My tomatoes are producing lots of fruit. Tomato pollination is done by bumblebees, not honey bees. It's possible you live in an area where bumblebee nests are not common.

Bees construct their nest from wax. They can construct wax combs very quickly. For example, they can constuct two wax combs in a week or two. A full colony that nests in a tree has about 10-20 combs.

Apples, avacados, almonds, berries (strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, cranberries), vine crops (canteloupes, watermelons, pumpkins, cucumbers) are just a few of the fruits and vegetables that require bee pollination to set fruit.

Honey bees evolved in Asia. Bees in general evolved around 80-100 million years ago.

That is a main topic of our research. We think the bees use odor cues to detect mite-infested pupae.

Wow. I think you are the third person to ask me that. I really don't know why.

All honey bees sold in the US are of the same species, Apis mellifera, and all are gentle for new beekeepers. How gentle the bees are depends greatly on how gently the beekeeper handles them.

Yes, the flavor of different honeys depends on the flowers from which the bees collect the nectar. For example, clover flowers produce a light honey; buckwheat flowers produce a dark, strong honey.

Yes, bees cannot see the red wavelengths of light.

I've been employed at the University of Minnesota since 1993. But I've been asking scientific questions about bees since I was 18 years old.