How's it going guys? Back with McKay and Bee Week here on the Epic Gardening

podcast. Like I said yesterday, today we're talking about how a hive operates.

What are the mechanisms that drive the hive? How do all the different types of bees

within a hive interact with each other and just what do we need to know about beehives

as gardeners? So I'm not going to do a whole lot of intro on this one. I figured we might as well just dive right into it. So let's go ahead and get into the show.

This might get a little nitty gritty for a gardener, but I think it would be interesting because you know bees in a perfect world

are integral to how a garden operates and so if we can understand like what happens within a

hive maybe at a high level I know you could probably go on for forever about that but if you could

illuminate us a little bit on what's happening in there that we don't understand? Well, you know, I don't think anyone

is going to fully understand it. We've been studying these for a long time and still

they kind of blow our minds with the little things that how they communicate or

how they store food but it's a

female dominant society you have your Queen B and she initially will fly off with

and meet with another hive and she mates with the drones of another hive.

After she's mated with the drones she comes back to her hive and she is then fertile for the rest of her life and she doesn't need to mate with anyone anymore.

Which is so that right there is.

Yeah, that's the same.

And so she'll come back and she just starts laying aids and she can lay hundreds of eggs each day.

How long is the Queen living?

Like three to five years.

Wow.

That's actually crazy.

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