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Bees are vital for our survival and our food security. Without them, there would be no pollination, and eventually, no life. We hope to convince you to love or at least appreciate these creatures for their crucial role in our ecosystem. So, next time you encounter a bee, consider it a friend and an essential worker helping to keep our planet healthy.

The important role that bees play in our ecosystem cannot be overstated. Not only do they contribute to pollination, but they also play a key role in maintaining our food sources and the survival of various species. It is crucial that we recognize the significance of bees and work to protect them. By gaining a deeper understanding of their behavior and habitat, we can do our part to ensure their survival and, in turn, the preservation of our own food sources. Let us all work together to appreciate and protect these amazing pollinators and the valuable gifts they bring to us all. Read our FAQ below to learn more about our little pollinating honey bee friends.

The Koutz Farm Bee Project is underway. We have 3 bee hives with stands that Papa Fred (Mrs. Koutz’s Dad) built for us. We would like to replace the frames with the Flow Hive frames at some point, but right now, we need bees, tools, a honey extractor, landscaping, gardening supplies and plants for the bees. This is an expensive undertaking and we could use all the help we can get. If you would like to support the Koutz Farm Bee Project to help promote beekeeping, please donate now by clicking one of the donation options below. At this time, we accept donations through PayPal. We truly thank you for your support and pray that God will shower blessings upon you for having a heart of service.

Bee Project Goals

Working toward our goal of $10,000 and 6 Full Hives.

Donate Now(On PayPal)

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Honey Bee FAQ

Progress Report

Why are honey bees important to our food sources?

1/3 of the U.S. diet is derived from insect-pollinated plants and honey bees are responsible for an impressive 80% of that process.
Honey bees pollinate the plants that are in turn used to feed cattle – making bees very important to our meat and dairy products.

Are honey bees good for the economy?

Honey bees add 15 billion dollars annually to the American agricultural system.

Click here to visit Koutz Farm's Glossary Of Terms page.

How many flowers does it take for a bee to produce 1 teaspoon of honey?

Bees visit 1,000 flowers and produce only 1 teaspoon of honey. To us, we see only a teaspoon of honey, but to that bee, that honey is a lifetime of work.

What is Royal Jelly?

According to Britannica, Royal Jelly, also known as Bee Milk, is a thick white substance that is nutrient rich. It is secreted through glands found in the heads of the worker bees and is used as food for the bee larvae for the first 3 days of life. If the hive is creating a new queen, it will feed the chosen larvae royal jelly through its full larvae development period.

How many species of Bees are there?

There are approximately 20,000 different species of bees in the world; however, many species of bees are becoming endangered and are at risk of being extinct.

How long does a bee live?

A worker bee typically lives for 40 (forty) days; however, a queen bee can live from 2 (two) to 7 (seven) years!

How many eggs can a Queen Bee lay?

The queen bee can lay up to 1,500 eggs a day in a healthy hive.

Learn about the Queen’s sex life at Bee Keeping Like A Girl – you will find the mating-habits of the Queen quite surprising!

How does an egg larvae become a male (Worker Bee) or female (Queen Bee)?

If the hive is healthy, an unfertilized egg will become a worker bee. A fertilized egg can become either a queen bee or a worker bee depending on what the larvae diet is through its development. If it is fed royal jelly for only 3 days of its life, then it becomes a worker bee and if it is fed royal jelly for the full larvae development cycle, then it becomes a queen bee.

What is the Varroa Mite?

The Varroa Mite is a parasite – the single most destructive pest for the honey bees – first detected in the U.S. in 1987. They are tiny red-brown external parasites of honey bees. The Varroa mite can live on adult honey bees, but they mainly feed and reproduce on larvae and pupae in the developing brood, causing malformation and weakening of honey bees as well as transmitting numerous viruses.

Learn more about this destructive mite at BeeAware.

What is "Cuddle Death"?

“Cuddle Death” is a way that bees kill an old or diseased queen. Once a queen is deemed unfit to serve the worker bees cluster tightly around her body until she dies from overheating.

What is "Colony Collapse Disorder" (CCD)?

Introduction: Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) was first reported in 2006. Beekeepers began reporting high colony losses where the adult honeybees simply disappeared from the hives, almost all at the same time. There were few, if any, dead bees found in or around the hives. The queen and immature bees (brood) were often found in the hives with plenty of food stores, inadequately attended by a few adult bees.

Cause: CCD is believed to be complex and a result of multiple factors. One study evaluated 61 factors, and found that no single stressor stood out as the primary cause of CCD. However, colonies affected by CCD had more pathogens and more types of pathogens than colonies without CCD. Pathogens are disease-causing organisms. A group of stakeholders that gathered in 2012 found a similar consensus, that a complex group of stressors and pathogens are associated with CCD.

Learn More Here: NPIC

What is European Foulbrood Disease?

European foulbrood (EFB) is a bacterial disease that effects honey bee larvae before the capped stage. European foulbrood disease is characterized by dead and dying larvae which can appear curled upwards, brown or yellow, melted, and/or dried out and rubbery. The causative bacteria, Melissococcus plutonius is ingested by honey bee larvae after which the bacterium competes for food inside the larvae. If the bacteria out-competes the larva, the larva will die before the cell is capped. Alternatively, the bee may survive until adulthood if the larvae has sufficient food resources. European foulbrood should not be confused with American foulbrood (AFB), which is caused by a different bacteria that produces different symptoms and control requirements.

Learn more about this terrible bacterial disease on the Bee Health website, here.

Many Pesticides Kill Bees

More research needed by Koutz Farm before we address this bullet point. We know experts are researching the effects of pesticides on bee colonies and we know pesticides are a big killer of our bee population.

We saw a chemical truck spraying from the highway closer to a nearby town.
The county requires 3 functioning bee-hives to get the ag-exemption on property less than 10-acres and they said that was the only thing they will consider to get the ag-exemption (not our chickens). What makes us mad, if this truck has sprayed anywhere near us and our hives, that would explain why our bees aren’t making it. So, we will be contacting the county to complain and see what they say. If they are going to spray and kill the bees, then they need to change the rules and allow chickens to qualify for the ag-exemption (BUT we really wanted the bees to help our garden thrive and to be able to harvest some of the honey from time to time and they are good for our world in general).Will provide more information here as it happens.
Thanks for following us. Due to COVID-19 and everything getting so expensive (inflation), we have not attempted to get more bees yet. We want to pick out a new area for the bees – maybe they don’t like the area we had picked. We are learning and apparently we are going to have some growing pains with this one. We will be trying again once money isn’t quite so tight or if we get enough donations in or sales from the store to be able to start improving our processes and hopefully making the bees happier.
Currently, we do not have bees in any of the hives. We did receive a gift of bees from Papa Fred for Christmas 2019. We picked them up that following March. The bees were VERY aggressive and wouldn’t stay in the hive. They swarmed twice but we caught them and put them back in a hive. We tried a different hive thinking maybe they didn’t like the first one. They did the same thing and we caught them the second time. At this point, we bought a ‘bee vacuum’ to be able to safely vacuum up a swarm of bees to rehive them – but by the time it was delivered, the bees had left – not to be found anywhere. The few stragglers died off. This one made us sad, mad and also a little relieved since the bees were so mean. We tried so hard to get them to stay and did a lot of work to make them happy. We had them for several months but it was in the heat of late summer that they left.
We have the 3 hives but our goal is to get 6 hives with the flow hive frames to make honey collection easier. For the standard framed hives, we need a honey extractor to get the honey out.
Super sad and disappointed, we waited a while to try again.
One day, during the winter, we went out and half the hive was just gone. They had swarmed and the queen went with them. The rest of the bees died because they didn’t have a queen and winter wasn’t a good time to requeen such a small group of bees – they wouldn’t have survived even if we had requeened.
I really enjoyed having the bees. They pollinated the plants and we had the most amazing berries growing everywhere. The berries were delicious.
Luckily the hive accepted her. They started making honey and laying eggs. We had larvae in the hives and a strong bee colony going.
Papa Fred assisted with requeening ($40 for the new queen) and we introduced her using a candy box (where the bees eat candy to release the queen and by the time she is released, they are used to her and either accept her or kill her).
We fed the bees and took care of them properly. But they started making peanuts (eggs for new queens) so we called a bee expert and were told to requeen the hive.Papa Fred helped us catch the bees from the ground and move them into a hive. We were able to locate the queen and the bees loved the hive.Papa Fred built 3 hives with frames, feeders and stands. They included the outer and inner cover, supers and deeps.
In 2018 we had a cluster of honey bees in the ground in our front yard. We protected them until we could get hives.

References

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