Hive Hype

Student working in the HIve

by Tony Moore; photos by Carl Socolow '77 

Behind the Rector Science Complex, behind a thick ring of wildflowers, two beehives were installed in October, and they brought a lot of buzz. They represent the beginning of an era: beekeeping on campus, an initiative spearheaded by Dickinson’s new beekeeping cooperative, dubbed The Hive.

Marcus Welker, projects coordinator for the Center for Sustainability Education (CSE) and head bee wrangler, is excited to see how this new living laboratory will enable the community to learn about sustainability problems and solutions through direct experience. So we thought we’d dive into the world of bees through a look at the tools of the trade and some of the more interesting terminology in the field. You’ll be talking like a seasoned beekeeper in no time!

  • Bearding: When bees gather on the front of a hive
  • Brood: Immature bees still existing as eggs, larvae or pupae
  • Chunk honey: Honey still in the comb
  • Drone: The male honeybee
  • Guard bees: Worker bees that challenge incoming bees and other intruders
  • Nurse bees: Young bees that feed and take care of the developing brood
  • Pollen bound: The state of the queen when the brood nest is so filled with pollen that the queen has nowhere to lay
  • Queen bank: Putting multiple caged queens into a hive
  • Queenright: A colony of bees that contains a queen
  • Robber screen: A screen used to stop intruders but that allows local bees into the hive
  • Royal jelly: A milky secretion nurse bees used to feed the queen and young larvae
  • Scout bees: Worker bees that look for new resources or a home for a swarm of bees
  • Shaken swarm: An artificial swarm made by shaking bees from combs into a screened box
  • Swarm: body of honeybees that emigrate from a hive and fly off together, accompanied by a queen, to start a new colony
  • Swarm cutoff: The point at which the colony decides whether it’s going to swarm
  • Worker bees: Infertile female bees responsible for carrying out all the routine tasks of the colony
  • Windbreaks: Manmade or naturally occurring barriers that reduce the force of winter wind on a beehive
  • Winter cluster: A compact ball of bees inside the hive, formed to generate heat
BeeKeeper Suit

For an in depth look into the beekeeper suit and tools, view it on Issuu.

Learn More

Published January 18, 2017