The Hive District
High-Rise Living, Bee Style
If the farm were a bustling city, this would be downtown—the beating heart of bee life. Each hive is its own little high-rise, buzzing with activity. Thousands of bees are inside, tending to the queen, making honey, and keeping everything running like a well-oiled machine.
Now, let’s get something straight—bees don’t want to sting you. A life-loving bee would rather be out collecting nectar than dealing with an arm-waving human. So take a breath, admire their hard work from a safe distance, and watch the magic unfold.
Attention Friends: A Fat Head Farm Beekeeper, a veil and other protective gear are required in a bee yard. Please keep a safe distance from active beehives and admire them from afar.
How a Hive Works
Every hive has a queen, and no, she doesn’t rule with an iron wing—her job is to lay eggs, up to 2,000 a day. The worker bees (all female, by the way) do everything else: gathering nectar, making honey, guarding the hive, raising baby bees, and even keeping the place clean. Then there are the drones, the male bees whose only job is to mate with a queen. They don’t gather food, they don’t make honey, and—get this—they get kicked out of the hive in the fall. Talk about a short-term gig.
A Year in the Hive
Spring & Summer: Full production mode. Bees are out collecting nectar and making honey, and the queen is laying eggs like crazy.
Fall: Time to prepare for winter. Bees make their final honey stores, kick out the drones (tough luck, guys), and start closing up shop.
Winter: The colony clusters together in a tight ball, using their bodies to generate heat and keep the queen warm. They survive on the honey they earlier in the year.
How Honey is Made
Ever wonder how a tiny bee makes something as perfect as honey? Here’s the quick version:
A worker bee flies up to five miles to collect nectar.
She stores it in her honey stomach (yes, that’s a thing) and brings it back to the hive.
Inside the hive, she passes the nectar to another bee, who adds enzymes to help break it down.
The nectar gets stored in a honeycomb cell, where the bees fan it with their wings to evaporate excess water.
When it’s just right, they cap it with wax, sealing it for storage.
From flower to hive, it takes about 2 million flower visits to make just one pound of honey. Makes you appreciate every golden drop, doesn’t it?
That first taste of honey straight from the honeycomb is something one will never forget…
Bee Fact: The Original GPS Masters
Honeybees don’t just wander around aimlessly. When a forager finds a great nectar source, she returns to the hive and does a waggle dance—yes, an actual dance—to tell the other bees exactly where to find it. The angle of her dance and the speed of her waggles give directions based on the position of the sun. It’s nature’s GPS, and it’s been working long before Google Maps.