Bee Lining Using Traditional Methods

The Basics

You have to know a bit about bees to understand the traditional methods of bee hunting. The first bit of bee behavior needed for bee hunting is as follows:

(1) When foraging bees finish filling their stomachs with nectar and/or finish filling their pollen baskets with pollen, they head back to their colony in the most direct fashion possible. They rarely deflect from a straight line in doing so. They make a "bee line" back to their colony.

It takes approximately one hour and several thousand flowers for a single bee to fill its stomach and its pollen baskets. Whereas its possible to watch flight behavior of random bees in the hope of seeing one head straight away from a foraging area, this is hardly an efficient use of time. So, the bee hunter must provide the bees with ready source of nectar so that they will fill up their stomachs quickly and return to their colony in a much smaller time span.

(2) When a foraging bee finds a good source of nectar and pollen, upon returning to the colony they will make an effort to recruit other bees to return to the same spot to help ferry the loads of bounty back to the colony.

Using a single chamber bee box

The traditional methods that I advocate on this site involve the use of a "bee box".

To Be Continued...

Using a two chamber bee box

Using a three chamber bee box

8/11/2008 - I recently purchased a three-chamber bee box and it arrived just today. I will get outside in the next few weeks to try it out, take pictures and document our experiences.

 Copyright © 2008