Text Transcript with Description of Visuals
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| [Music] | ABEJAS Logo in front of white truck carrying honey bee colonies Title: Module 1.1 Honey Bee Biology |
| Welcome to ABEJAS. This is a video series that provides background on bees and beekeeping management to set you up for success. | Beekeeper in an apiary talking to camera |
| Whether you are a seasoned beekeeper or this is your first time in an apiary, we hope you’ll learn useful skills and valuable information throughout these three video modules. | Group of beekeepers inspecting honey bee colonies |
| Each module will contain four videos covering different aspects of beekeeping and honey bee health. By the end of the training series, you’ll understand basic biology of honey bees and learn about beekeeping equipment, how to safely handle risks that come with beekeeping, and honey bee pests and pathogens. [Music] | Beekeeper putting on gloves Person driving forklift Varroa mite crawling on bee pupa Beekeeper using hive tool to scratch at hive frame Bee larva in hexagonal cells Beekeeper putting on hive lid Beekeeper driving forklift carrying honey bee colonies Bee with deformed wings |
| Commercial beekeeping operations are a critical industry, supporting the growth and quality of a variety of agricultural products worldwide. | Footage of beekeepers walking in storage area stacking hive boxes [Credited footage: Project Apis m] People walking by honey bee colonies on a truck at night [Credited footage: Project Apis m] |
| Nearly one third of the food consumed by humans around the world requires pollination for fruit, nut, and seed growth. | Honey bee pollinating yellow flowers and white flowers |
| Commercially managed honey bees are the most efficient method of providing these essential pollination services. | Group of beekeepers inspecting honey bee colonies [Credited footage: Project Apis m] |
| In this first video, we will review what a honey bee is and how they are different from other bees and insects. We will also teach you the different members of a honey bee colony, what their roles are and how to tell them apart. | Beekeeper in an apiary talking to camera Bulleted list appears and speaker reads off topics listed |
| A bee is an animal in the group called arthropods. | Honey bees flying into hive entrance |
| More specifically, bees are insects. | Close up of honey bee crawling in hive entrance |
| Arthropods have hard exoskeletons, have jointed appendages, and are very diverse. | Honey bee pollinating white and purple flower |
| Some examples of arthropods include crustaceans like shrimp and crabs, arachnids like spiders, scorpions and mites and other insects. Insects are a subgroup of arthropods, and they all have a few key features in common. | Beekeeper in an apiary talking to camera Title: Arthropods Text: Crustaceans; picture of a crab and shrimp Text: Arachnids; picture of a scorpion and mite Text: Insects; picture of a a ladybird beetle and bee |
| They all have three body segments: a head, a thorax, and an abdomen. | Diagram of bee |
| They all have two antennae on their head. They all have three pairs of legs, or six total that connect to their thorax. And they have compound eyes. | Close up of bee with red circle around antennae, legs, then eyes |
| There are over 25,000 described species of bees around the world, but very few of them produce honey. | Bee sitting on a leaf Text on screen: A bee native to North America (genus Andrena) Small bees crawling inside hive Text on screen: Stingless bees of the Meliponini tribe produce small amounts of sour honey. [Credited footage: Project Apis m] |
| Apis mellifera is a scientific name of the species of bee we know as the honey bee. There are 28 different recognized subspecies of honey bees worldwide, but only a few in the United States. Honey bees are generally yellow, brown, or black, with yellow, gray, brown, or black hairs on their bodies. | Honey bees crawling on a hive frame containing honey. Text on screen: Apis mellifera Cluster of honey bees hanging from a branch. Text on screen: Apis dorsata [Credited footage: Project Apis m] Honey bees crawling on a hive frame. Text on screen: Apis florea [Credited footage: Project Apis m] Honey bee pollinating yellow flower. Text on screen: Apis mellifera |
| Their coloring can indicate what subspecies they may be. For example, Caucasian honey bees usually have a darker coloring. | Two frames of bees held side by side, left containing lighter blonde bees, right containing darker golden bees. Text on screen: Two subspecies of Apis mellifera, Italian (left) and Carniolan (right) |
| The amount of hair can tell a beekeeper how old the bee is. Young bees are typically covered in dense, fluffy hairs, while older bees lose their hairs and appear more greasy and shiny. | Two bees side by side. A fuzzy bee climbing on hive frame on the left and a bee pollinating a yellow flower on the right. Text on screen: Younger honey bees (left) and Older honey bee (right) |
| Honey bees have specialized features that are important to their life cycle, including a flattened depression on the outside of their hind legs called a corbicula, also referred to as pollen baskets. They have two pairs of wings and female bees have stingers. We’ll talk more about that later. | Close up of honey bee on frame Honey bees crawling in hive entrance. Bee carrying pollen on leg lands and crawls into hive Close up of honey bee |
| Honey bees are often confused with other flying insects such as yellowjackets. | Beekeeper in an apiary talking to camera |
| You may see yellowjackets near honey bee hives since they prey on honey bees. Yellow jackets are wasps with distinct yellow and black stripes and a more slender, elongated body. Honey bees are more golden and brown, have more hair, and a rounder body shape compared to yellow jackets. [Music] | Yellowjackets on hive lid Yellowjacket eating honey bee A close up of a yellowjacket (top) and honey bee (bottom). Text on screen: Yellowjacket, honey bee Yellowjackets and honey bees climbing on honey bee hive entrance. Text on screen: Yellowjackets with bright yellow and black stripes alongside hairier, and golden brown honey bees. |
| Honey bees are social insects. Ants and termites are also social. They work together to care for the colony and exhibit specialized behaviors that are different from many other types of nonsocial insects. One trait of sociality is reproductive division of labor. In a honey bee colony, there is one female responsible for reproduction. She is known as the queen, and she is the female bee that is solely responsible for mating and laying eggs. Social colonies also have cooperative brood care. The queen’s daughters, called workers, perform many of the tasks required to help those eggs reach adulthood. They also have overlapping generations. | Honey bees flying into hive entrance Honey bees crawling on whole hive frame Zooms in on queen bee that has red dot on thorax. Red circle appears around queen. Zooms out to honey bees crawling on whole hive frame |
| While many insects emerge as adults at specific points of the year, honey bee adults can emerge throughout the year, meaning the bees in a colony will be different ages. | Newly emerging bee chewing her way out of cell |
| So far, we’ve talked about the different behaviors that social insects have. Now let’s learn about different types of bees inside each hive, how they are different and what they do. | Beekeeper in an apiary talking to camera Beekeeper lifting hive box off another hive box, bees flying |
| The worker bees are the powerhouse of a colony. They make up a large majority of the population in a colony, and perform nearly all of the essential functions for the survival of the colony. | Honey bees crawling on hive frame Honey bees flying in apiary Honey bees crawling on hive frame |
| Young bees, known as nurse bees, stay inside the hive and clean, feed, and tend to the juveniles and queen. | Honey bees with face down in cell. Two red circles appear. Text on screen: Nurse bees cleaning cells Honey bee feeding the queen via trophallaxis Text on screen: Nurse bees feeding the queen Three honey bees drinking from cells. Text on screen: Nurse bees consuming nectar |
| As they get older, workers become foragers that collect pollen and nectar, or they become guards who ward off predators and protect the colony. | Bee pollinating light purple flower Bee pollinating yellow flower Close up of honey bee |
| They store food collected by the foragers, maintain the temperature of the hive, and build honeycomb. Worker bees all have stingers, a modified egg laying structure that can pierce the skin of most animals they see is a threat. When they sting, they inject venom. These stingers are barbed, allowing them to stick in clothing or skin and continue to deliver venom until removed. Stinging kills the honey bee. The stinger is a critical part of the bee’s exoskeleton, and once removed, the bee will dry out and die. | Person holding a honey bee stinger on their finger. Text on screen: A honey bee stinger Dark glove containing 5 stingers. Red circles appear around stingers. Text on screen: Honey bee stingers in a glove A close up of a stinger on end of hive tool. Text on screen: Here you can see part of the exoskeleton attached to the stinger |
| [Music] Each colony has one queen. | Close up of a honey bee queen with bright green ink on thorax |
| She is the only reproductive female and is responsible for communicating with the workers by releasing pheromones. Without a queen, a colony cannot maintain their population and organization. The queen is the most important member of the colony. | Honey bees crawling on frame, red circle appears around queen bee Close up of queen bee crawling on frame |
| Queens are larger than workers and have an elongated abdomen that contains enlarged ovaries. She can lay over 1000 eggs every day. | Beekeeper in an apiary talking to camera. Diagram showing queen laying egg in cell appears. Profile view of egg laid inside wax cell. Text on screen: Eggs in brood cells |
| The queen can sting, but is focused on laying eggs and is less likely to sting than a worker who is trying to defend the colony. | A queen with red dot on thorax laying an egg inside honey bee cell. Text on screen: A queen laying an egg |
| The queen flies when going on a mating flight or swarming, which we will talk about in a later video. | Bee swarm in a tree |
| As the Queen lays eggs, her offspring, the sterile female workers care for the brood. | Close up of queen bee crawling on frame |
| The males in the colony are known as drones. Their bodies are larger and bulkier than the workers. They have very large eyes that take up nearly their entire head. A drone’s only responsibility is to mate with the queen from another colony. He will die shortly after a successful mating. Drones do not have stingers and cannot sting, so you can practice holding them by their thorax if you want to learn how to handle the queen. | Close up of a drone (male) bee crawling on frame. Red circle appears around eyes Emerging drone from cell Person holding a drone bee |
| Now that you know more about honey bees, the different members in the colony and the jobs these bees are doing, you can better understand their lifecycles and how to care for them in the next few videos. | Beekeeper in an apiary talking to camera ABEJAS logo, list of two upcoming videos, and @wsubeeprogram YouTube Logo appears |
| [Music] | Beekeepers working in hives in an apiary Overlay of WSU Bee Program, Washington State University, Wonderstone Films, United States Department of Agriculture, Project Apis m, Miller Honey Farms, and University of Minnesota Extension logos appear Scrolling list of people involved in development of videos appears |
| If you’ve enjoyed this video, please subscribe to the channel and leave us a comment below to let us know what additional topics you would like us to cover in future videos. | A beekeeper closing a clapperboard that says “WSU ABEJAS English” Beekeeper in an apiary talking to camera |