Pest Expert Overview: Honey Bees in Bryan & College Station
Pretty much everyone knows a little about honey bees, Apis mellifera. These social insects live in colonies of up to 90,000 individuals. Their color is variable from brown to black with yellow mixed in. They are actually an introduced species in the Americas and are native to Europe.
Life Cycle
Honey bees propagate new colonies by swarming, when a healthy colony produces new queens that take some of the workers and leave to begin a new colony. New queens mate outside of the colony with as many as 20 male bees, also called drones. This happens when new queens are about 14 days of age. Queens are able to produce eggs for about 4 years after mating. The colony replaces the queen if egg production goes down.
Queens lay as many as 2,000 eggs per day in their honeycomb cells constructed by workers. The eggs hatch into larvae that develop within the cells and are cared for by workers. Workers are all female and produced with fertilized eggs, while drones are produced with unfertilized eggs. The queen regulates this process depending on colony needs. Additional queens are produced when workers feed larvae of fertilized eggs a large amount of a substance called royal jelly, created by the workers. The types of honeycomb cells made for the different types of bees and how they are cared for is regulated by pheromones from the queen.
Honeybees forage on nectar and pollen. Nectar is used to create honey which they store as a food source. This foraging activity results in pollination of many plant species, allowing them to produce fruit and seeds. Honeybees are able to communicate the location of food sources with each other using bee dances.
Why are they Pests?
Honey bees are responsible for around 80% of all plant pollination. Around 1/3 of the human diet comes either directly or indirectly from insect-pollinated plants, thus conservation of honeybees is vital to our way of life.
Foraging honey bees can become a nuisance in early spring and late fall when temperatures are high enough for foraging but there is a limited number of nectar sources. They may flock to nectar producing plants around homes or even try to steal from sugary drinks you may be enjoying on a patio. They will not be aggressive, but it can be unsettling.
When bees swarm in late spring, big groups of swarming bees can be alarming. They are typically not aggressive during a swarm and usually move on from places they land to rest. Occasionally, swarming honey bees may establish colonies in wall voids of houses or other man made structures. These colonies must be destroyed or removed.
Finally, honey bees, especially Africanized honey bees, will aggressively defend colonies. This can result in a fatal number of stings. Africanized bees have interbred with the European honey bees in Texas, so there is a full range of aggressiveness found in our wild colonies from docile to very mean.
Honey Bee Prevention
You can prevent honey bees from starting colonies inside your house by sealing cracks and crevices on the outside of structures
Professional Honey Bee Control
If you are dealing with an infestation of honey bees, Venus Pest Company can help. Founded by Aggie Entomologist Dr. Scott Lingren, we provide expert, eco-friendly Integrated Pest Management solutions in Bryan and College Station. To get started, fill out the contact form, call/text 979.774.0486 or email [email protected]. Don’t let nuisance pests take over your home!
