A simple glossary
There is a lot to learn in beekeeping but these simple terms will get you started.
- Apiary:
The location where the hives are. There may be anything from one to hundreds of hives.
- Out Apiary:
An apiary to which you have to travel - not at the bottom of your garden.
- Hive:
The box in which the bees live.
- Colony:
The collection of bees in a hive - could be up to 60,000 bees in a colony in summer.
- Queen:
There is one queen in a colony and she lays eggs - up to 2,000 a day, every day, all summer.
- Workers:
Female bees who do most of the work - foraging for nectar, pollen and water and feeding and guarding the colony.
- Drones:
Male bees which appear to do nothing except fly out to meet with a queen and mate with her. Once they have mated with a queen they die. They are all thrown out of the colony in the Autumn.
- Queen Right:
This is used to describe a colony that has a Queen and she is doing what she should. There is no such expression as "queen wrong"!
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