BEE EDUCATION · ALEXANDRIA, MINNESOTA
Buzz-ucation.
Explore bees, flowers and honey through interactive activities for all ages. Discover life inside the hive, then explore where bees forage around Alexandria, Minnesota.
Or explore the foraging mapInside the hive
Open each hive layer to learn where bees raise young, store honey and enter the colony.
Step insideRead the waggle dance
Decode the direction, follow the clue, and find the flowers.
Step insideNectar to honey
See how bees collect nectar, remove water and store finished honey in wax cells.
Step insideBuild a bloom season
Choose Minnesota native flowers for spring, summer and fall to plan a longer season of food for pollinators.
Step insideWhy honey crystallizes
Why does honey turn grainy or firm? Compare liquid and crystallized honey, then learn how gentle warming makes it pour again.
Step insideSmall beginnings.
Different destinies.
Follow a queen, worker and drone from egg to adult. Move through the days, look inside the cell, and discover how food shapes a bee’s future.
Explore bee developmentKEEP FOLLOWING THE FLOWERS
Bee foraging.
How far can bees travel?
Explore the landscape around a hive, then discover the work behind each jar.
Illustrative hive centered on Alexandria. This is not our apiary or a pickup address.
FOLLOW THE FORAGE
Bee foraging around Alexandria.
About 12.6 square miles
This shows the area inside a circle, not a measured flight path or a guarantee of where our bees forage.
Honey bees routinely forage roughly 1–3 miles from the hive and can reach about 7.5 miles (12 km) when food is scarce nearby. Explore from the hive center out to that long-distance range; it is not a fixed daily route or a hard limit for every bee.
FROM FLOWER TO JAR
A small jar.
A remarkable amount of work.
Choose a size. Watch the patch bloom to reveal the collective work behind the honey.
Each illuminated flower represents about 50,000 flower visits.
Hex sampler · 6 oz honey
How do we estimate that?
This illustration scales the commonly cited estimates of about two million flower visits and 768 worker-bee lifetime contributions per pound of honey. Flower visits may include repeat visits to the same plants. These are educational estimates—not counts from our hives. Nectar yield, weather and colony conditions change the actual effort.
UNDERSTANDING VARROA
What is Varroa?
Beekeeping in the United States has changed dramatically since Varroa arrived in 1987. This invasive mite, originally from Asia, has become one of the most serious threats to honey bee colonies. In recent decades, monitoring and managing mites has become a central part of keeping colonies healthy.
Background: USDA National Invasive Species Information Center and University of Minnesota Bee Lab.
Varroa destructor is a tiny external parasitic mite that feeds on developing and adult honey bees and spreads bee viruses. Uncontrolled infestations can weaken colonies and contribute to colony death, especially as bees head into winter.
An adult female mite is about 1.1 mm long and 1.5 mm wide. Small to us—but substantial beside a bee.
Imagine a mite roughly 7 inches across on a person. That is the size relationship shown here: a 1.5 mm-wide mite beside a 15 mm bee, scaled to a person about 71 inches tall. The outlines show proportions, not actual screen size.
Sources: USDA ARS — mite dimensions; University of Missouri Extension — worker bee size; University of Minnesota Bee Lab — mite impacts and management.