Bee time at Westfields with COPT’s new initiative
COPT has exciting news!!
We have contracted with Alvéole to install a honey bee hive at the Greens I & II property. I have attached an announcement that you can share with your organization. I have also included some additional information regarding the bees and their habits.
MEMBERS OF THE HIVE
• There is only one queen per hive. In ideal conditions, Her Majesty can live for up to five years. She requires a court of bees to help feed, hydrate and clean her, as she is too busy laying up to 2,000 eggs daily to do it herself.
• Male bees within the hive do not have stingers. Instead, they have a reproductive system. Drones do not forage for resources, as their primary role is to mate with a virgin queen from another hive.
• Worker bees may only live between 30 and 45 days, but they occupy a variety of different roles during that time: cleaning, nursing, building, fanning, guarding and foraging.
STINGS
• Honey bees are not interested in human beings. Their daily quest is to bring nectar, pollen, resin and water back to the colony to ensure its development.
• Bees only resort to stinging when they feel their colony is threatened. This shouldn’t come as a big surprise when you consider that, unlike wasps, bees die shortly after delivering a sting. Their stinger gets stuck and
tears off, taking part of their abdomen with it.
• Bees have no motivation to sting unless aggression is demonstrated towards them.
• Italian bees have a very mild temperament. Because of this, they’re perfect neighbors in densely populated urban areas. It’s also why urban beekeepers wear little or no protection.
• At Alvéole, we work with a special breed of Italian bees, selected over five years for their docility. We’ve installed hives at hundreds of companies, schools and houses over the last several years, and we’ve never
had to deal with a major issue related to bee stings. Of course, the possibility of getting stung while standing close to a beehive exists, but it’s very slim.
• Many people who have suffered a painful sting think it was caused by a bee – yet fail to find a stinger in their skin. This means they were more likely stung by a wasp. Wasp stingers, unlike those of bees, are
streamlined and can be pushed in or out of their abdomens as they please.
INTERESTING FACTS
• Workers dedicate their lives to serving the colony. They will never leave it for another.
• Bees can see color, particularly blue, purple and violet.
• As they get older, worker bees are given increasingly complex tasks.
• Each worker bee lives from 3 to 6 weeks in the summer, and 3 to 6 months in the winter.
• Bees communicate with pheromones, smells that cause a response in other members of the hive.
• It is estimated that bees need to eat 8 kilos of honey to produce a single kilo of beeswax.
• Bees fly the equivalent of four times the earth’s circumference to produce one kilogram of honey.
• Bees visit up to 4,500,000 flowers to produce every kilogram of honey.
• Each bee will produce about 1/8 teaspoon of honey in its entire lifetime.
COPT will host two workshops for those interested in learning more about honey bees and their importance to our agriculture and humans! I’ll keep you updated on the date and time.
Below is a map of the location of the hive and our landscape company has installed a pollinator garden for our bees!!