Encounter with Nature - Honey Bee Nest

Sometime during end February 2020, while I was at our housing area playground with my children, my eldest alerted me that there was a bee nest on one of the trees near the playground. There were some older children throwing stones at the nest, even when I told them not to do so. I am not sure why they did not think of the consequence of messing with angry bees. Due to the close proximity to the playground and children's safety at risk, the local council was called to destroy the nest. I was not at home when they came over to destroy the nest, but I went over the next morning and was absolutely devastated with the carnage where the hive used to be.

The strong smell of kerosene overpowered the fallen nest, dead bees scattered around it. A close look up revealed that this was a honey bee nest, and at the point it was destroyed was full of bee larvae and honey. It was really sad to see how the bees had to die this way 😢 

A close up of the destroyed nest, filled with dead bees and larvae (in white).

A neighbour who was passing by the playground asked me what was I doing. I told him I was mourning the death of the innocent honey bees, and also to take some photos so I could remember this incident. He then informed me, inside his house, there was also a honey bee nest on one of his fruit trees. On the day the local council came to destroy the nest, the entire colony of bees absconded from the hive on his tree. His view is that the bees knew danger was nearby, so they decided to abscond their nest to protect themselves. He also felt very sad with the incident that took place.

I then asked if he still needed or wanted the nest. If he did not need it, may I have it for educational purposes. He said he had no need for the empty nest, and he doubted the bees would return. He was kind to cut it off the branch and passed it to me. I had never seen a natural bee nest up close, so I had taken some close-up photos of the nest.   

This was how the entire nest looked like below. The nest smelt faintly of honey. Most of the cells were open, and I could not locate any larvae in this nest. Based on what I read online, lack of honey and filled cells could meant that the bees from this colony had planned to leave the nest, but circumstances made them absconded it earlier. 

I also learnt that the bee nest was made of beewax generated by the bees themselves. The middle part of the nest was hard but the corners were still soft, one top part was accidentally dented by my rough handling 😔 

Beautiful natural honeycomb designed by Mother Nature 💗

Wanting to find out more about honey bees, I looked up Google and Youtube to get more information about honey bee nest. I found this video below very informative about the queen bee, but also how do we identify a queen bee cell in the nest. 

Based on the video, I was able to identify the queen bee cells. Basically they were the ones that stuck out oddly at the bottom of the nest. Per Wikipedia, Queens are raised in specially constructed queen cells. The fully constructed queen cells have a peanut-like shape and texture. Queen cells start out as queen cups. Queen cups are larger than the cells of normal brood comb and are oriented vertically instead of horizontally. Worker bees will only further build up the queen cup once the queen has laid an egg in a queen cup.

Also interesting to note was the size of the cells of the nest itself. The top and middle section were  even and small, while the cells at the bottom of the nest were slightly uneven and much larger. The small cells were meant for  worker bees, while the larger cells were for drone bees. 

Below is a cross-section of a bee nest. This was not from the nest I got from my neighbour, but was part of the destroyed nest. I had to be careful not to touch the parts which were doused by kerosene.

This was a nice illustration I found on Google, on how the life cycle of the honey bee and what is going on inside the nest.

I showed the children how the nest looks like, and briefly educated them about the bee nest structure as well as the life cycle of the honey bee. I also took the opportunity to educate my eldest on the consequence of destroying a bee nest, such as loss of pollinators, and may result in the fruit trees planted by neigbours not fruiting. It was also cruel to kill off the bees in this manner.

At first I wanted to keep the nest, but couldn't find a suitable place to store it. Besides, it would not serve much purpose at home, but is too wasted to just throw it away. I mean, what are the chances of seeing a bee nest up close? After much deliberation, I asked my children's school principal if she would like to have the bee nest for her school for education purposes. She agreed to it, and I handed it over to her the next day.

I never paid any attention or interest on bees, but this time around I learnt a lot about honey bees and their nest, learning is indeed a never ending process! I also hope the bees would come back to build their nest in our neighbourhood next time, but hope they would be more clever to choose a tree which no one pay attention to, for their survival.