Louisiana Beekeepers Association

Abdomen: The posterior or third region of the body that encloses the honey stomach, stomach proper, intestines, sting and reproductive organs.
Absconding Swarm: Bees which abandon their hive because of disease, lack of food or other unfavorable conditions.
Acarapis woodi: Scientific name of the acarine mite, which infests the tracheae of bees.
Acarine Disease: Condition caused by Acarapis woodi.
Afterswarms: Swarms which leave a given colony with a virgin queen after a swarm of the same season has already left it.
AHB: Africanized honey bee.
Alarm Odor: A substance given off by guard bees to alert the colony of danger.
Alighting Board: The projection before the entrance to a hive to make it easier for the bees to land.
American Foul Brood (AFB): Contagious disease of bee larvae caused by Bacillus larvae.
Antennae: A pair of slender jointed feelers extending from the head which bear certain sense organs.
Anther: Part of the plant that develops and contains pollen.
Apiarist: A beekeeper.
Apiary: Group of bee colonies kept in one location (bee yard).
Apiculture: The science and art of studying and using honey bees for man’s benefit.
Apis: The genus to which the honey bee belongs.
Apis dorsata: Scientific name for the large honey bee of Asia which builds open air nests of single comb suspended from treebranches, rocky ledges, etc,
Apis Mellifera: Scientific name of the Western honey bee.
Artificial Insemination: The impregnation (mating) of virgin queens in confinement by use of instruments.

Baby Nucleus: A miniature hive containing just a few hundred bees used for the mating of queens. It is distinguished from a regular nucleus in that it has miniature frames.
Bacillus larvae: Bacterial organism causing American foulbrood.
Balling a queen: Clustering around an unacceptable queen by worker bees to form a tight ball; usually the queen dies or is killed in this way.
Bee bread: The pollen of flowers gathered by bees, mixed with honey and deposited in the comb. It is used by bees for food.
Bee Brush: A device used for brushing bees from off of their combs.
Bee dance: Anthropomorphic term for one of several physical maneuvers conducted within a bee colony; it has very inaccurate correlations relative to a forager’s flight experience in the field (distance and direction of the site visited), but odor on the dancer’s body appears to be the means of communication that recruits use to find the same nectar or pollen source.
Bee escape: A device to let bees pass in only one direction; usually inserted between honey supers and brood chambers, for the removal of bees from honey supers.
Bee Gloves: Gloves wore to protect the hands from bee stings.
Bee gum: Usually a hollow log hive.
Beehive: Domicile prepared for a colony of honey bees.
Bee louse: Relatively harmless insect that gets on honey bees, but larvae can damage honeycomb; scientific name is Braula coeca.
Bee metamorphosis: The transformation of the bee from egg to larva to pupa and finally to the adult stage.
Bee paralysis: An adult bee disease of chronic and acute type caused by different viruses.
Bee space: A space (1/4- to 5/16-inch) big enough to permit free passage for a bee but too small to encourage comb building.Leaving bee space between parallel beeswax combs and between the outer comb and the hive walls is the basic principle of hive construction.
Beeswax: Wax secreted from glands on the underside of the bee abdomen; molded by bees to form honeycomb.
Bee tree: A hollow tree occupied by a colony of bees.
Bee veil: A screened veil worn over the head to protect from bee stings.
Bee venom: The poison secreted by special glands injected by the bee sting.
Bee yard: (See apiary)
Bottom board: Floor of beehive.
Brace comb: Section of comb built between and attached to other combs.
Braula coeca: (See bee louse)
Boardman feeder: A small, wooden or plastic feeder placed at the hive entrance and holding an inverted glass jar of sugar syrup.
Brood: Young developing stages of bees; includes eggs, larvae (unsealed brood), and pupae (sealed brood).
Brood chamber: The area of the hive where the brood is reared; usually the lowermost hive bodies.
Brood comb: Wax comb from brood chamber of hive containing brood.
Brood nest: Area of hive where bees are densely clustered and brood is reared.
Burr comb: Comb built out of place, between movable frames or between the hive bodies.

Capped brood: Brood (either last larval stage or pupal stage) that has been capped over in its cell.
Capped honey: Cells full of honey, closed or capped with beeswax.
Cappings: Beeswax covering of cells of honey which are removed in order to extract the honey.
Cappings spinner: A centrifuge with wire-screened baskets used to separate honey from wax.
Carniolan bees: A race of honey bees which originated in the southern part of the Austrian Alps and northern Yugoslavia.
Caucasian bees: A race of honey bees native to the high valleys of the Central Caucasus.
Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD): a phenomenon in which worker bees from a beehive or European honey bee colony abruptly disappear. While such disappearances have occurred throughout the history of apiculture, the term colony collapse disorder was first applied to a drastic rise in the number of disappearances of Western honey bee colonies in North America in late 2006. The cause or causes of the syndrome are not yet fully understood.
Cell: The six-sided compartment of a honeycomb, used to raise brood or to store honey and pollen. Worker cells approximate five to the linear inch, drone cells are larger averaging about four to the linear inch.
Cell cup: A queen cell when it is about as deep as it is wide. Artificial cell cups are made as well as natural.
Chilled brood: Brood that has died because of chilling. It can be a result of mistreatment of the bees by the beekeeper. It also can be caused by a pesticide hit that primarily kills off the adult population, or by a sudden drop in temperature during rapid spring buildup. The brood must be kept warm at all times; nurse bees will cluster over the brood to keep it at the right temperature. When a beekeeper opens the hive (to inspect, remove honey, check the queen, or just to look) and prevents the nurse bees from clustering on the frame for too long, the brood can become chilled, deforming or even killing some of the bees.
Chunk comb honey: A jar of honey containing both liquid (extracted) honey and a piece of comb with honey.
Cleansing flight: Flight bees take after days of confinement, during which they void their feces.
Clipped queen: Queen whose wing (or wings) has been clipped to prevent her from flying.
Cluster: Loosely, any group of bees that forms a relatively compact aggregation. A winter cluster is composed of all the bees in the colony huddled as closely together as necessary to maintain the required temperature. As the ambient temperature increases, the cluster expands until it loses its identity but it will reappear if the temperature drops.
Colony: Social community of several thousand worker bees, usually containing one queen, with or without drones. (See social insects)
Comb: (See honeycomb)
Comb foundation: A thin sheet of beeswax embossed to form a base on which the bees will construct (draw out) a complete comb.
Comb Foundation Machine: A machine for embossing smooth sheets of wax.
Comb honey: Honey in the comb.
Commercial Beekeeper: One who derives an income from apicultural endeavors.
Corbicula: (See pollen basket)
Creamed honey: Honey made to crystallize smoothly by seeding with 10 percent crystallized honey and storing at about 57°.
Cross: When different races of bees are breed together, the resulting progeny is called a cross, e.g. cross breed.
Cross pollination: Transfer of pollen from an anther of one plant to the stigma of a different plant of the same species.
Crystallized honey: Honey hardened by formation of dextrose-hydrate crystals. Can be re-liquefied by gentle heat.
Cut comb honey: Comb honey cut into appropriate sizes and packed in plastic container for market.

Dearth: Severe to total lack of availability, usually in reference to nectar and/or pollen.
Demaree: Method of swarm control, by which queen is separated from most of brood; devised by man of that name.
Deep Super: A super (box) that is approximately 9 5/8″ deep; hive body.
Dextrose: Also known as glucose; one of principal sugars of honey.
Diastase: Enzyme that aids in converting starch to sugar.
Diploid: An organism or cell with two sets of chromosomes, for example, worker and queen honey bees.
Division board: Flat board used to separate two colonies or colony into two parts.
Division board feeder: A wooden or plastic trough which is placed in the hive in a frame space to feed the colony honey or sugar syrup.
Drawn comb: Comb having the cells built out (drawn) by honey bees from a sheet of foundation. Cells are about 1/2-inch deep.
Drifting: Movement of bees from their original hive into a neighboring hive, frequent with drones and surprisingly common with workers.
Drone: Male bee.
Drone Brood: Brood which matures into drones, reared in larger cells than worker bees and normally from infertile eggs.
Drone comb: Comb with about four cells to the inch and in which drones are reared.
Drone layer: A queen which lays only unfertilized eggs which always develop into drones. Results from improperly or non-mated queen or an older queen who has run out of sperm.
Drumming: Pounding on the sides of a hive to make the bees ascend into another hive placed over it. In England it is called driving.
Dwindling: Rapid or unusual depletion of hive population, usually in the spring.
Dysentery: The discharge of fecal matter by adult bees within the hive. Commonly contributing conditions are nosema disease, excess moisture in the hive, starvation conditions, and low quality food. Tan, brown, or black fecal smears on combs or outside of hive indicate such a problem.

Embed: To force wire into comb fountain by heat, pressure or both for the purpose of strengthening the resulting comb.
Emerging Brood: Young bees in the act of gnawing their way out of their brood cells.
Entrance: Any opening in the hive permitting the passage of bees.
Entrance Reducer: A notched wooden strip for regulating the size of the bottom board entrance.
Escape Board: A board having one or more bee escapes in it, used to remove bees from supers.
European foulbrood (EFB): Brood disease of bees caused by Streptococcus pluton.
Extracted honey: Honey removed from the comb by centrifugal motion (in a special machine called an extractor) and marketed in the liquid form.
Extractor: Machine that rotates honeycombs at sufficient speed to remove honey from them.

Feeder: Appliances for feeding bees sugar syrup, or some other form of feed.
Field Bees: When worker bees become about 16 days old, they begin the work of flying abroad to collect nectar, pollen, water and propolis.
Follower Board: A board anywhere from 3/4″ to 1/4″ thick, plywood or other material, cut to the size of your frames (deep, med or shallow). A simple divider that acts like a movable hive side, allowing you to create any interior size needed.
Fondant: A soft candy used for feeding bees in winter, or queen, or for shipping cages. Usually made from syrup of table sugar by the addition of a small amount of tartaric acid. Enough powered sugar is added to make a heavy dough.
Food chamber: Hive body containing honey particularly for overwintering bees.
Foulbrood: A malignant contagious disease of bees affecting the brood. The foulbrood diseases of major concern are:
American Foulbrood caused by Bacillus Larvae and Streptococcus Pluton. Two other brood diseases include Sacbrood caused by a filterable virus and Para Foulbrood caused by Bacillus Para-Alvei.
Foundation: (See comb foundation)
Frame: Rectangular, wooden or plastic frame assembled to support wax fountain for the bees to draw comb on. A series of frames are held a bee space apart in a vertical position in a hive invented by Langsstroth in 1851.
Fructose: (See levulose).
Fumagillin: Antibiotic given bees to control nosema disease.
Fume board: A rimmed hive cover containing a pad of absorbent material into which benzadehyde or butyric anhydride (bee repellents) is poured. Used to remove bees from honey supers.

Galleria Mellonella: Scientific name of greater wax moth, whose larvae destroy honeycomb.
Gamete: A male or a female reproductive cell (egg or sperm).
Gene: A unit of inheritance located at a specific location in a chromosome.
Gene pool: The genetic base available to bee breeders for stock improvement.
Germplasm: All the hereditary material that can potentially contribute to the production of new individuals.
Giant bee: (See Apis dorsata)
Glucose: A synonym for dextrose.
Grafting: The transfer of young larvae from worker cells to queen cups.
Grafting Tool: A needle or probe used for transferring the larva in grafting.
Granulated honey: (See crystallized honey)
Gum: A hollow log beehive often from a gum tree.

Haploid: An organism or cell with one set of chromosomes; for example, drone bee.
Hive: Man-constructed home for bees.
Hive stand: A device that elevates the complete hive up off the ground.
Hive tool: Metal tool for prying supers or frames apart.
Hobbyist Beekeeper: One who keeps bees for pleasure without any intent to profit.
Hoffman frame: Self-spacing wooden frame of type customarily used in Langstroth hives.
Honey: Sweet, viscous fluid elaborated by bees from nectar obtained from plant nectaries, chiefly floral.
Honey bee: A social honey producing bee of the class Insecta, order Hymenoptera, super-family Apoidea and family Apidae. In 1758 Linnaeus named the honeybee Apis mellifera (honey-bearer). In 1761 changed the name to Apis mellifica (honey-maker). The American Entomological Society has ruled the former will be the correct scientific name for the honeybee.
Honey bound: When the brood nest is bounded or restricted by cells/comb filled with honey.
Honeycomb: Comb built by honey bees with hexagonal back-to-back cells on median midrib.
Honeydew: Sweet secretion from aphids and scale insects.
Honey extractor: (See extractor)
Honey flow: Period when bees are collecting nectar from plants in plentiful amounts.
Honey Gate: A faucet used for drawing honey from drums, cans or extractors.
Honey house: Building in which honey is extracted and handled.
Honey pump: Pump for transferring liquid honey, usually from the extractor to storage tanks.
Honey stomach: (Honey sac) An enlargement of the posterior end of the esophagus lying in the front part of the abdomen, It is the sac in which the bee carries nectar from flower to hive.
Honey sump: Temporary honey-holding area with baffles usually placed between the extractor and the honey pump; tends to hold back sizable pieces of wax and comb.
Hybrids: The off spring resulting from a cross between different races, varieties, selections and occasionally species of bees, as between black and Italian bees.
Hymenoptera: The insect order to which honeybees belong. Ants and wasps are also members of this order.

Imbedding Tool: A device for sinking the wire of the frame into the sheet of wax foundation.
Increase: To start new colonies with the purpose of adding to the total number of colonies, by dividing established colonies, installing package bees, or hiving natural swarms.
Inner cover: A cover used under the standard telescoping cover on a bee hive.
Integrated Pest Management (IPM): is a pest control strategy that uses a variety of complementary strategies including: mechanical devices, physical devices, genetic, biological, cultural management, and chemical management. These methods are done in three stages: prevention, observation, and intervention. It is an ecological approach with a main goal of significantly reducing or eliminating the use of pesticides while at the same time managing pest populations at an acceptable level.
Introducing cage: Small wood and wire cage used to ship queens and also sometimes to release them into the colony.
Inverted or invert sugar syrup: is a mixture of glucose and fructose. It is obtained by splitting sucrose into its two components. Compared with its precursor sucrose, inverted sugar is sweeter and its products tend to stay moist and are less prone to crystallization. Inverted sugar is therefore valued by bakers, who refer to the syrup as ‘trimoline’ or ‘invert syrup’.
Invertase: Enzyme produced by bees that speeds inversion of sucrose to glucose and fructose.
Italian bees: A race or variety of honey bee which originated in Italy and has become widely dispersed and cross-bred with other races. They were successfully introduced into this country about 1860.

Jumbo hive: Hive 2-1/8 inches deeper than the standard Langstroth hive.

Langstroth: Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth, 1810 to 1895, a minister from Pennsylvania who patented the first hive incorporating bee space thus providing for removable frames. The modern hive frequently is termed the Langstroth hive and is a simplified version of similar dimensions as patented by Langstroth.
Langstroth frame: 17 5/8″ wide x 9 1/8″ deep standard U.S. frame.
Langstroth hive: A hive having frames 17 5/8″ x 9 1/8″. Any movable frame hive is a Langstroth hive since Langstroth invented the removable frame hive.
Larva: Stage in life of bee between egg and pupa; “grub” stage. Second stage of bee metamorphosis.
Laying worker: Worker bees which lay non-fertilized eggs producing only drones. They occur in hopelessly queenless colonies. Laying workers will lay multiple eggs per cell, have a spotty brood pattern, eggs laid on the sides of the cell or off center, and drone brood in worker sized cells.
Levulose: Non-crystallizing sugar of honey which darkens readily if honey is overheated.
Line breeding: Mating of selected members of successive generations among themselves in an effort to maintain or fix desirable characteristics.

Mandibles: Jaws of an insect. In the honeybee and most insects the mandibles move in a horizontals rather than in a vertical plane.
Mating flight: The flight of a virgin queen during which time she mates with one or more drones high in the air away from the apiary. Queens usually mate with 6 to 10 drones on two or more mating flights.
Mead: A wine made with honey.
Medium Super: A super (box) that is approximately 6 5/8″ deep; hive body.
Metamorphosis: Changes of insect from egg to adult. The developing process of a honeybee is four stages: egg, larva, pupa and adult.
Migratory beekeeping: Movement of apiaries from one area to another to take advantage of honey flows from different crops.
Mite: (See Acarapis woodi and Varroa jacobsoni)

Natural swarm: A swarm of bees issuing spontaneously from a parent hive to form a new colony. The old queen leaves a few days before virgin queens emerge and fight among each other for the right to carry on the reproductive process for the old colony.
Nectar: A sweet liquid secretion from the nectaries chiefly in flowers and on leaves of plants.
Nectaries: Special cells on plants which secrete nectar.
Nosema disease: Disease of bees caused by protozoan spore-forming parasite, Nosema apis.
Nucleus (Nuke, Nuc): A small colony of bees, usually covering from two to five frames of comb, resulting from a colony division. Also, a queen-mating hive used by queen breeders.
Nurse bees: Three to ten day old adult bees that feed the larvae and perform other tasks in the hive.

Observation hive: Hive with glass sides so bees can be observed.
Ocellus (plural ocelli): One of the three simple eyes of the honeybee.
Orientation flights: Short orienting flights taken by young bees, usually by large numbers at one time and during the warm part of the day.

Package bees: From two to five pounds of adult bees with or without a queen shipped in a wire and wood cage to start or boost colonies.
Paralysis: (See bee paralysis)
Parthenogenesis: Production of offspring from a virgin female with intervention of a male; producing unfertilized eggs; producing only drones.
Pheromones: Chemicals secreted by insects to convey information or to affect behavior of other insects of the same species. (See queen substance)
Piping: A series of sounds made by a queen, louder than any sound made by a worker. Consisting of a loud, shrill tone, succeeded by several others, each sound shorter than the one that precedes it. A laying queen is seldom heard to pipe; a virgin perhaps always pipes at intervals after emerging from her cell, and in response to her piping may be heard the “quahking” of one or several virgins in their cells, if such are in the hive, the “quahking” being uttered in a lower key and in a more hurried manner than the piping.
Pistil: The ovule-bearing organ of a seed plant. After fertilization, the ovules become the seeds.
Pollen: Dust-like grains formed in the anthers of flowering plants within which are produced the male elements or sperm. It is the protein food essential to bees for the raising of brood.
Pollen basket: Area on hind leg of bee adapted for carrying pellets of pollen.
Pollen cake: Cake of sugar, water, and pollen or pollen substitute, for bee feed.
Pollen substitute: Mixture of water, sugar, and other material, such as soy flour, brewer’s yeast, etc., used for bee feed.
Pollen supplement: Pollen substitute added to natural pollen in a pollen cake.
Pollen trap: Device which forces bees entering hive to walk through a 5-mesh screen, removing pollen pellets from their legs into a collecting tray.
Pollination: The transfer of pollen from the anthers of a flower to the stigma of that or another flower.
Pollinizer: The plant source of pollen used for pollination; e.g., pollinizer varieties of apples and pears must be planted in order to produce a crop. Bees must carry the pollen from one variety to another.
Proboscis: The tongue or combined maxillae and labium of the bees.
Propolis: A kind of glue or resin collected from trees or other plants by bees; used to close holes and cover surfaces in the hive. Also called “bee glue”.
Pupa: Third stage of the developing bee, during which it is inactive and sealed in its cell. (See “Metamorphosis”)

Queen: Sexually developed female bee. The mother of all bees in the colony.
Queen cage candy: A special fondant made from Nulomoline, drivert, and glycerine; used to feed queen and attendant bees in queen cages.
Queen cell: Cell in which queen develops.
Queen cup: The beginnings of a queen cell in which the queen may lay a fertile egg to start the rearing of another queen.
Queen excluder: Device usually made of wood and wire, with opening 0.163 inch, to permit worker bees to pass through but excludes queens and drones. Used to restrict the queen to certain parts of the hive.
Queenright: A colony of bees with a properly functioning queen.
Queen substance: Pheromone material secreted from glands in the queen bee and transmitted throughout the colony by workers. It makes the workers aware of the presence of a queen.

Rabbet: The cut or groove along the edge of a board; in this case, the drop down edge in the hive bodies, that the ends of the top bar frame rest on.
Refractometer: A precision instrument for determining the moisture content of honey.
Rendering wax: Melting old combs and wax cappings to separate the wax from its impurities, by means of heat.
Re-queen: To replace a queen in a hive. Usually to replace an old queen with a young one.
Ripening: Process whereby bees evaporate moisture from nectar and convert its sucrose to dextrose (glucose) and levulose (fructose), thus changing nectar into honey; 18.6% water or less.
Robbing: As applied to bees, the taking of honey by force from the hives of other colonies.
Royal jelly: A milky white finely granular jelly secreted from the pharyngeal glands of nurse bees, used to feed developing queen larvae.

Sac brood: A disease of the brood. Slightly contagious but not serious.
Scale: A dehydrated, dead larva shrunken to an elongated thin, flat chip at the bottom of a cell.
Scout bees: Worker bees searching for nectar or other needs including suitable location for a swarm to nest.
Screened Bottom Board: The bottom board of a hive that has had its wood replaced with screen held with the remaining wooded rim or frame.
Sealed brood: Brood in pupa stage with cells sealed (capped).
Self-pollination: The transfer of pollen from the anther to the stigma of the same plant.
Septicemia: A blood disease of adult honeybees. It is not a major disease but is caused by Bacillus apisepticus.
Septum: The center wall of a honey comb The part that was foundation.
Shaking Bees: Removing bees from the combs bay jarring the frame or super.
Shallow Super: A super (box) that is approximately 5 3/4″ deep or less.
Skep: A beehive, usually of straw and dome-shaped, that lacks movable frames. (old world usage)
Slatted Bottom Rack: A ventilation board that fits between the bottom hive body and the bottom board (Langstroth Hive). It provides cluster space for bees, allows air circulation without allowing a direct draft on the brood, and helps prevent swarming.
Slumgum: A dark residue, consisting of brood cocoons and pollen, which is left after wax is rendered by the beekeeper.
Small Hive Beetle: (Aethina tumida). The small hive beetle can be a destructive pest of honey bee colonies, causing damage to comb, stored honey and pollen. If a beetle infestation is sufficiently heavy, they may cause bees to abandon heir hive. The beetles can also be a pest of stored combs, and honey (in the comb) awaiting extraction. Beetle larvae may tunnel through combs of honey, feeding and defecating, causing discoloration and fermentation of the honey.
Smoker: Device used to blow smoke on bees to reduce stinging.
SMR (Suppress Mite Reproduction): Scientists at the Honey Bee Breeding Genetic & Physiology Laboratory (USDA, Agricultural Research Service) in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, have selected bees that are resistant to this [varroa] mite. The mechanism of resistance is a trait of the honey bee that suppresses mite reproduction (SMR). This trait prevents female mites from producing progeny. Because SMR is a trait rather than a stock, SMR genes can be added to any population of honey bees by using traditional breeding methods.
Social insects: Insects which live in a family society, with parents and offspring sharing a common dwelling place and exhibiting some degree of mutual cooperation; e.g., honey bees, ants, termites.
Solar wax melter: Glass-covered box in which wax combs are melted by sun’s rays and wax is recovered in cake form.
Spermatheca: Small sac attached to the oviduct of the queen, in which are stored the spermatozoa received from the drones with which she mated.
Spermatozoa: Male reproductive cells which fertilize the eggs.
Spiracles: External openings of tracheae through which bees breathe.
Spring dwindling: A condition in which the colony population decreases in size during spring at which time exponential population growth is anticipated.
Stamens: The pollen producing organs of the flower.
Stigma: That part of the pistil of a flower which receives the pollen for the fecundation of the ovules; the end of the pistil.
Sting: Modified ovipositor of female Hymenoptera developed into a piercing shaft through which a painful organic secretion is injected. Weapon of defense.
Streptococcus Pluton: The bacteria that causes European foulbrood.
Sucrose: Cane sugar; main solid ingredient of nectar before inversion into other sugars.
Super: A wooden box with frames containing foundation or drawn comb in which honey is to be produced. Named for its position above the brood nest. The same type of box is referred to as a hive body when it is situated below the honey supers and is intended to be used for brood rearing and pollen storage.
Supersedure: The replacement of a weak or old queen in a colony by a daughter queen – a natural occurrence.
Surplus honey: A term generally used to indicate an excess amount of honey above that amount needed by the bees to survive the winter. This surplus is usually removed by the beekeeper.
Swarm: The aggregate of workers bees, drones and queen that leave the parent colony to establish a new colony. Natural division of a colony of bees; usually in spring.

Tarsus: Fifth segment of bee leg.
Thorax: Middle part of bee between the head and the abdomen. The section in which the wings and legs are attached.
Tracheae: Breathing tubes of insects which open into the spiracles.
Tracheal mite: (See Acarapis woodi)
Travel Stain: The darkened appearance at the entrance and on the comb, caused by bees tracking propolis over the surface as they are walking.

Uncapping knife: Knife (usually heated) used to remove the capping from the combs so honey can be extracted.
Uncapping Plane: A device resembling a safety razor for removing the capping from the combs so the honey can be extracted.
Unite: Combine one colony with another to form one large one. Special precautions must be taken to minimize fighting among the combined colonies.
Unsealed brood: Brood in egg and larval stages only.

Varroa destructor: An external parasitic mite that attacks honey bees.
Virgin queen: Unmated queen.
VSH (Varroa Sensitive Hygiene): USDA ARS scientists Dr. John Harbo and Dr. Jeffrey Harris at the Honey Bee Breeding Laboratory in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, have defined and tested a trait of the honeybee which appeared to suppress mite reproduction (SMR). Recently it has been better defined as “varroa sensitive hygiene (VSH).” This is a form of behavior where adult bees remove pupae that have reproductive mites but do not disturb pupae that have mites that produce no progeny.

Wash-boarding: Worker honey bees exhibit a “group” activity known as rocking or wash-boarding on the internal and external surfaces of the hive. This behavior is believed to be associated with general cleaning activities but virtually nothing is known as to the age of worker engaged in the behavior, under what circumstances workers washboard and the function of the behavior. Wash-boarding behavior appears to be age dependent with bees most likely to washboard between 15-25 days of age. Wash-boarding increases during the day and peaks through the afternoon. Workers may respond to rough texture and washboard more on those surfaces. The function of this behavior remains to be elucidated.
Wax Bloom: A grayish, powdery coating which forms on the surface of beeswax.
Wax glands: The eight glands on the underside of bee abdomen from which wax is secreted after bee has been gorged with food.
Wax moth: a moth whose larvae destroy wax combs by boring through the combs.
Winter cluster: Closely packed colony of bees in winter.
Wired foundation: Foundation with strengthening wires embedded in it.
Wired frames: Frames with wires holding sheets of foundation in place.
Worker bee: Sexually undeveloped female bee.
Worker comb: Honeycomb with about 25 cells per square inch, in which workers may be reared.
Worker egg: A fertilized egg laid by a queen bee, which may produce either a worker or queen.