About the Bees

The gift of bees.

Berryland Bee Farm and our brand, Maple Leaf Honey Products, are grateful for the hard work the bees do, and the sacrifice they give to provide us with honey, wax, propolis, and venom that improves everyone's quality of life. This page is dedicated to them.

How much do you know about bees?

We will offer some fun facts about bees here. If you want to know more about bees and beekeeping, contact us directly, or contact your local bee club.

Honeybees live in hives of up to 30,000 bees each.

There are three types of bees in each hive.

Queen

There is only one queen per hive. she only mates once in her life with about 15 drones. Her job is to lay the eggs so the hive continues to live. The queen also produces chemicals that guide the behaviour of the other bees.

Drone

These are the male bees, and their purpose is to mate with the new queen. That's it. Several hundred live in each hive during the spring and summer. But come winter, when the hive goes into survival mode, the drones are kicked out to die!

Worker

These are all female and their roles are to forage for food (pollen and nectar from flowers), build and protect the hive, clean and circulate air by beating their wings. Workers are the only bees most people ever see flying around outside the hive

According to Wikipedia...

A honey bee is a eusocial flying insect within the genus Apis of the bee clade, all native to Eurasia but spread to four other continents by human beings. They are known for construction of perennial, colonial nests from wax, for the large size of their colonies, and for their surplus production and storage of honey, distinguishing their hives as a prized foraging target of many animals, including honey badgers, bears and human hunter-gatherers. In the early 21st century, only seven species of honey bee are recognized, with a total of 44 subspecies, though historically seven to eleven species are recognized. The best known honey bee is the western honey bee which has been domesticated for honey production and crop pollination; modern humans also value the wax for candle making, soap making, lip balms, and other crafts. Honey bees represent only a small fraction of the roughly 20,000 known species of bees. Some other types of related bees produce and store honey and have been kept by humans for that purpose, including the stingless honey bees, but only members of the genus Apis are true honey bees. The study of bees, which includes the study of honey bees, is known as melittology.