OUR BEES

Riviera Honey Farms is home to over 100,000 Italian Honey Bees. These bees are known for being gentle and excellent honey producers. 

Description & Characteristics: 

-Italian worker bees are light in color with alternating stripes on their abdomen 

-Italian Honey Bees are strong foragers and do a great job at keeping their hive clean. 

The Queen

-The queen is slightly darker which makes her easier to find. 

-Aside from the queens’ longer abdomen and darker color, another way we spot her is from the dot of color we mark her with. There is an international code for bees which allows you to tell the age of any marked queen. 

Year ending Colour:

5 or 0 Blue

6 or 1 White

7 or 2 Yellow

8 or 3 Red

9 or 4 Green

(Example: if your queen was introduced to your hive in 2019, she would have a green dot on her thorax.)

-It is imperative that beekeepers check to see if the queen is still in the hive and doing her job. Checking up on her productivity (i.e. inspecting brood-babies laid by the queen- pattern) is one way of visually seeing the work she is producing. Another thing to make sure of is that the queen has not laid other queens cells, often called queen cups. If this is the case, the beekeeper must exterminate these eggs (by simply pinching cell) so the hive does not get confused on who their queen/leader is.

-The queen is essential to the hive and making sure the worker bees are doing their job: maintaining a clean hive, bringing in enough pollen, and producing honey.