Beekeeping Glossary Part 2
Inbred: A homozygous organism usually produced by inbreeding.
Inbreeding: Matings among related individuals.
Inner cover: A cover used under the standard telescoping cover on a bee hive.
Instrumental insemination: The act of depositing semen into the oviducts of a queen by the fuse of a manmade instrument.
Integrated Pest Management (IPM): is a pest control strategy that uses a variety of complementary strategies including: mechanical devices, physical devices, genetic, biological, cultural management, and chemical management. These methods are done in three stages: prevention, observation, and intervention. It is an ecological approach with a main goal of significantly reducing or eliminating the use of pesticides while at the same time managing pest populations at an acceptable level.
Introducing cage: Small wood and wire cage used to ship queens and also sometimes to release them into the colony.
Invertase: Enzyme produced by bees that speeds inversion of sucrose to glucose and fructose.
Inverted or invert sugar syrup: is a mixture of glucose and fructose. It is obtained by splitting sucrose into its two components. Compared with its precursor sucrose, inverted sugar is sweeter and its products tend to stay moist and are less prone to crystallization. Inverted sugar is therefore valued by bakers, who refer to the syrup as ‘trimoline’ or ‘invert syrup’.
Italian bees: A race or variety of honey bee which originated in Italy and has become widely dispersed and cross-bred with other races.
Jumbo hive: Hive 2-1/2 inches deeper than standard Langstroth hive.
Langstroth: A minister from Pennsylvania who patented the first hive incorporating bee space thus providing for removable frames. The modern hive frequently is termed the Langstroth hive and is a simplified version of similar dimensions as patented by Langstroth.
Langstroth frame: 9-1/8- by 17-5/8-inch standard U.S. frame.
Larva: Stage in life of bee between egg and pupa; “grub” stage.
Laying worker: Worker bees which lay nonfertilized eggs producing only drones. They occur in hopelessly queenless colonies. Laying workers will lay multiple eggs per cell, have a spotty brood pattern, eggs laid on the sides of the cell or off center, and drone brood in worker sized cells.
Levulose: Noncrystallizing sugar of honey which darkens readily if honey is overheated.
Line breeding: Mating of selected members of successive generations among themselves in an effort to maintain or fix desirable characteristics.
Locus: A fixed position on a chromosome occupied by a given gene or one of its alleles.
Mandibles: Jaws of insects.
MAQS: Mite Away Quick Strip.
Mating flight: The flight of a virgin queen during which time she mates with one or more drones high in the air away from the apiary. Queens usually mate with 6 to 10 drones on two or more mating flights.
Mead: A wine made with honey. If spices or herbs are added, the wine usually is termed metheglin.
Metamorphosis: Changes of insect from egg to adult.
Migratory beekeeping: Movement of apiaries from one area to another to take advantage of honey flows from different crops.
Mite: See Acarapis woodi and Varroa jacobsoni.
Mutation: A term used to describe both a sudden change in the alleles or chromosomes of an organism and the changed form itself as it persists.
Nadir / Subber / Under-super: When new hive boxes are added to the bottom and not the top of the beehive.
Nectar: A sweet secretion of flowers of various plants, some of which secrete enough to provide excess for the bees to store as honey.
Nectaries: Special cells on plants from which nectar exudes.
Nosema disease: Disease of bees caused by protozoan spore-forming parasite, Nosema apis.
Nucleus (Nuke, Nuc): A small colony of bees resulting from a colony division. Also, a queen-mating hive used by queen breeders.
Nurse bees: Three-to 10-day-old adult bees that feed the larvae and perform other tasks in the hive.
Observation hive: Hive with glass sides so bees can be observed.
Ocellus (ocelli): Simple eye(s) of bees.
Package bees: A quantity of bees (2 to 5 lb) with or without a queen shipped in a wire and wood cage to start or boost colonies.
Paralysis: (See bee paralysis).
Parthenogenesis: Production of offspring from a virgin female.
Pheromones: Chemicals secreted by animals to convey information or to affect behavior of other animals of the same species. (See queen substance.)
Pistil: The combined stigma, style, and ovary of a flower.
Play flight: Short orientation flight taken by young bees, usually by large numbers at one time and during warm part of day.
Pollen: Male reproductive cells of flowers collected and used by bees as food for rearing their young. It is the protein part of the diet. Frequently called bee bread when stored in cells in the colony.
Pollen basket: Area on hind leg of bee adapted for carrying pellets of pollen.
Pollen cake: Cake of sugar, water, and pollen or pollen substitute, for bee feed.
Pollen substitute: Mixture of water, sugar, and other material, such as soy flour, brewer’s yeast, etc., used for bee feed.
Pollen supplement: Pollen substitute added to natural pollen in a pollen cake.
Pollen trap: Device which forces bees entering hive to walk through a 5-mesh screen, removing pollen pellets from their legs into a collecting tray.
Pollination: The transfer of pollen from the anthers of a flower to the stigma of that or another flower.
Pollinator: The agent which transfers pollen; e.g., a bee.
Pollinizer: The plant source of pollen used for pollination; e.g., pollinizer varieties of apples and pears must be planted in order to produce a crop. Bees must carry the pollen from one variety to another.
Proboscis: Mouth parts of bee for sucking up nectar, honey, or water.
Propolis: A glue or resin collected from trees or other plants by bees; used to close holes and cover surfaces in the hive. Also called bee glue.
Pupa: Stage in life of developing bee after larva and before maturity.
Queen: Sexually developed female bee. The mother of all bees in the colony.
Queen cage candy: A special fondant made from Nulomoline, drivert, and glycerine; used to feed queen and attendant bees in queen cages.
Queen cell: Cell in which queen develops.
Queen cup: The beginnings of a queen cell in which the queen may lay a fertile egg to start the rearing of another queen.
Queen excluder: Device usually made of wood and wire, with opening 0.163 inch, to permit worker bees to pass through but excludes queens and drones. Used to restrict the queen to certain parts of the hive.
Queenright: A colony of bees with a properly functioning queen.
Queen substance: Pheromone material secreted from glands in the queen bee and transmitted throughout the colony by workers. It makes the workers aware of the presence of a queen.
Race: Populations of bees, originally geographically isolated and somewhat adapted to specific regional conditions.
Ripening: Process whereby bees evaporate moisture from nectar and convert its sucrose to dextrose (glucose) and levulose (fructose), thus changing nectar into honey.
Rendering wax: Melting old combs and wax cappings and removing refuse to partially refine the beeswax. May be put through a wax press as part of the process.
Requeen: To replace a queen in a hive. Usually to replace an old queen with a young one.
Robbing: Bees steal honey from other hives. A common problem when nectar is not available in the field.
Ropiness: Having the characteristic of sticky elasticity and stringing out when stirred and stretched.
Royal jelly: Glandular secretion of young worker bees used to feed the queen and young brood.
Sac brood: A fairly common virus disease of larvae, usually nonfatal to the colony.
Scale: A dehydrated, dead larva shrunken to an elongated thin, flat chip at the bottom of a cell.
Scout bees: Worker bees searching for nectar or other needs including suitable location for a swarm to nest.
Screened Bottom Board (SBB): also known as Open Mesh Floor, a device (either acting as the bottom board or added on top of the bottom board) used to protect beehives from Varroa mites as well as ventilation for the beehive.
Sealed brood: Brood in pupal stage with cells sealed.
Self-pollination: The transfer of pollen from the anther to the stigma of the same flower or to flowers of the same plant or other plants of identical genetic material such as apple varieties, clones of wild blueberries, etc. (See autopollination).
Septicemia: Usually minor disease of adult bees caused by Pseudomonas apiseptica.
Skep: A beehive, usually of straw and dome-shaped, that lacks movable frames.
Slumgum: A dark residue, consisting of brood cocoons and pollen, which is left after wax is rendered by the beekeeper.
Smoker: Device used to blow smoke on bees to reduce stinging.
Social insects: Insects which live in a family society, with parents and offspring sharing a common dwelling place and exhibiting some degree of mutual cooperation; e.g., honey bees, ants, termites.
Solar wax melter: Glass-covered box in which wax combs are melted by sun’s rays and wax is recovered in cake form.
Spermatheca: Small saclike organ in queen in which sperms are stored.
Spermatoza: Male reproductive cells.
Spiracles: External openings of tracheae through which bees breathe.
Spring dwindling: A condition in which the colony population decreases in size during spring at which time exponential population growth is anticipated.
Stamen: Male part of flower on which pollen-producing anthers are borne.
Sting: Modified ovipositor of female Hymenoptera developed into organ of defense.
Sucrose: Cane sugar; main solid ingredient of nectar before inversion into other sugars.
Super: A wooden box with frames containing foundation or drawn comb in which honey is to be produced. Named for its position above the brood nest. The same type of box is referred to as a hive body when it is situated below the honey supers and is intended to be used for brood rearing and pollen storage.
Supersedure: The replacement of a weak or old queen in a colony by a daughter queen – a natural occurrence.
Supersisters: Queens or worker bees produced by a single queen and sired by identical sperm from a single drone (subfamily).
Surplus honey: A term generally used to indicate an excess amount of honey above that amount needed by the bees to survive the winter. This surplus is usually removed by the beekeeper.
Swarm: Natural division of colony of bees.
Tarsus: Fifth segment of bee leg.
Thorax: Middle part of bee.
Tracheae: Breathing tubes of insects.
Tracheal mite: (See Acarapis woodi)
Tumuli: Nest mounds (wild bees).
Uncapping knife: Knife used to remove honey cell caps so honey can be extracted.
Unite: Combine one colony with another.
Unsealed brood: Brood in egg and larval stages only.
Varroa destructor: An external parasitic mite that attacks honey bees Apis cerana and Apis mellifera.
Virgin queen: Unmated queen.
Walk-away split: Frames with eggs and worker bees are removed from a queenright hive and installed into an empty brood chamber or nuc. The bees should create a queen cell out of a suitable egg. Once the queen hatches, successfully mates and returns to the hive, the hive will be queenright. Another option is to remove one complete brood chamber from a hive that has newly laid eggs in it, including bees, and move to a new location for the start of a new hive.
Warm Way ---- The frames in the hive are positioned so that the top bars are parallel to the entrance. (See also Cold Way)
Washboarding: Worker honey bees exhibit a “group” activity known as rocking or washboarding on the internal and external surfaces of the hive. This behavior is believed to be associated with general cleaning activities but virtually nothing is known as to the age of worker engaged in the behavior, under what circumstances workers washboard and the function of the behavior. Washboarding behavior appears to be age dependant with bees most likely to washboard between 15-25 days of age. Washboarding increases during the day and peaks through the afternoon. Workers may respond to rough texture and washboard more on those surfaces. The function of this behavior remains to be elucidated.
Wax glands: Glands on underside of bee abdomen from which wax is secreted after bee has been gorged with food.
Wax moth: Lepidopterous insect whose larvae destroy wax combs.
Wild bees: Any insects that provision their nests with pollen, but do not store surplus’ edible honey.
Winter cluster: Closely packed colony of bees in winter.
Wired foundation: Foundation with strengthening wires embedded in it.
Wired frames: Frames with wires holding sheets of foundation in place.
Worker bee: Sexually undeveloped female bee.
Worker comb: Honeycomb with about 25 cells per square inch.
Worker egg: Fertilized bee egg.
European Translations
Crown board : see Inner Cover
