Beekeeping Glossary

A

• Alarm Pheromone When stinging, a bee releases an alarm pheromone at the base of her sting and from the mandibular glands, a chemically complex mixture of dozens of scent compounds.
• Animal Disease Fund (Germany) The Animal Disease Funds (Germany) are institutions of the federal states.
• Apiary An apiary is the place where a beekeeper has set up his colonies, and at the same time the simple roof or stand on which the hives are placed.
• Apiary Mating (Open Mating) With apiary mating, the mating units with the young queens are simply set up at one's own apiary.
• Artificial Swarm (Package) An artificial swarm is a bee colony deliberately created by the beekeeper that imitates the natural swarming process.

B

• Baker's Honey Under the Honey Regulation (Germany), baker's honey is honey suitable for industrial purposes or as an ingredient in other foods, which may show a foreign taste or smell, may have begun to ferment, may have fermented, or may have been overheated.
• Bee Bread Pollen stored in the cells and fermented by lactic acid bacteria.
• Bee Brush The bee brush is a narrow, soft hand brush used to sweep bees off a comb or off the hive wall.
• Bee Disease Ordinance (Germany) The Bee Disease Ordinance is the central German regulation for protecting bee stocks from notifiable diseases.
• Bee Escape The bee escape is a small one-way device that lets bees pass down from the honey super into the brood chamber but blocks their way back up.
• Bee House A bee house is a fixed building in which several hives stand and in which equipment, comb and often also the extractor are housed at the same time.
• Bee Space Bee space refers to the gap between two comb surfaces, or between a comb and the hive wall, that honey bees neither build up with wax nor seal with propolis.
• Bee Venom Bee venom, technically apitoxin, is the acidic mixture of secretions from the worker's venom gland.
• Beeswax Beeswax is the colony's building material and is exuded by the wax glands of young worker bees.
• Bienenkiste (German Top-Bar Box) The Bienenkiste is a single-chamber horizontal box developed by Mellifera e.V.
• Blossom Honey Blossom honey, also called nectar honey in the Honey Regulation (Germany), is honey that comes wholly or predominantly from the nectar of plants.
• Bottling Honey Bottling is the last step of honey processing, in which the fully clarified honey, creamed if required for the desired consistency, goes into its sales jars.
• Breeding Assessment (Körung) Körung is the formal recognition of a queen as a breeding mother by the responsible breeding association.
• Breeding Material Breeding material refers to the young larvae of a selected queen from which new queens are reared.
• Breeding Value The breeding value estimates what hereditary share a queen has in the performance of her colony.
• Brood Chamber The brood chamber is the part of a hive where the colony's actual nest is located: this is where the queen lays her eggs, where the larvae grow, and where the bees store pollen and part of their stores in the immediate vicinity of the brood.
• Brood Hygiene Brood hygiene refers to a colony's ability to detect, uncap and remove damaged, diseased or dead brood.
• Brood Nest The brood nest is the area of the comb where the queen lays eggs and the brood develops.
• Brood Nucleus Brutling is another name for the brood split, by far the most commonly used way of making splits in Germany.
• Brood Removal The deliberate removal of brood combs with adhering bees from a very strong colony.
• Brood Separation Brood interruption refers in beekeeping to a group of biotechnical measures in which the queen's egg laying is separated in time or space from the brood already present in order to interrupt the reproductive cycle of the Varroa mite.
• Brushed Swarm The brushed swarm is a variant of the artificial swarm (package) and refers to a new bee colony formed by brushing bees off the combs of various colonies, using a bee brush, and putting them into an empty hive.
• Buckfast Bee The Buckfast bee is not a subspecies but a breeding strain.

C

• C-Shaped and Stretched Larva The larva of the bee passes through two clearly distinguishable stages.
• Carniolan Bee The Carniolan bee, the most widespread race of the western honey bee in Central Europe.
• Cement Honey Cement honey is the term for honey that crystallizes so hard, due to a high proportion of the trisaccharide melezitose, that it can barely be worked at all.
• Certified Bee Inspector Certified bee inspectors are trained beekeepers who support the veterinary authorities in matters of bee health.
• Colony Register (Bestandsbuch) The colony register is the record of which medicines a beekeeper has used in his colonies.
• Comb Constancy The trait of a colony to remain calm on a comb when it is lifted out, rather than becoming agitated, festooning, or running off it.
• Comb Honey Comb honey, also known in German as Scheibenhonig, is honey that the bees have stored in freshly built, brood-free comb and that is sold, along with the comb, in whole or divided pieces.
• Comb Hygiene Comb hygiene refers to the regular renewal of the combs in a bee colony, above all in the brood chamber.
• Comb Storage Drawn comb kept over winter or between two nectar flows is above all threatened by the Greater and Lesser Wax Moth.
• Compound Eye Compound eye and faceted eye refer to the same organ: the two large eyes located on either side of the bee's head.
• Crystallization Honey crystallizes as soon as a sugar exceeds its saturation limit and precipitates out of the supersaturated solution.

D

• Dadant The Dadant hive goes back to the American beekeeper Charles Dadant, who developed it in the second half of the nineteenth century.
• Dance Language When a forager returns from a rewarding flight, she dances on the comb and thereby recruits more bees for the same source.
• Dark Bee (European Dark Bee) The dark bee, scientifically Apis mellifera mellifera, is the subspecies of the honey bee originally native to Central, Western, and Northern Europe north of the Alps.
• Diastase Diastase is an enzyme that the bees add to the honey during processing and that can break down starch-like carbohydrates.
• Divide and Treat Split and treat, often abbreviated TuB in German, is a biotechnical concept for Varroa control recommended by bee institutes that combines late-summer colony care with a particularly effective treatment.
• Divider Board (Intermediate Floor) A divider board is a flat panel the size of the box that is placed between two boxes and separates them from each other.
• Drone The drone is the male bee in the colony. It develops from an unfertilized egg and therefore carries only a single set of chromosomes, so it has no father, but can become the father of the next bee generation.
• Drone Brooding Drone brooding refers to a colony that produces only drones.
• Drone Congregation Area A drone congregation area is a meeting point in the air where drones from many colonies in the wider surroundings gather and wait for virgin queens.
• Drone Frame The drone frame (Drohnenrahmen) is essentially the same as the plain drone frame used for unguided comb building (Baurahmen): a frame without a preformed wax foundation that the bees build out with the noticeably larger cells typical of drones.
• Drone Frame The building frame is an empty frame without foundation, which the bees draw out themselves as free natural comb.

E

• Egg Laying The laying of eggs by the queen. She first inspects the cleaned cell, then lowers her abdomen into it and fixes the egg to the bottom of the cell, where it stands upright.
• Eggs (in Cells) The freshly laid eggs of the queen. They stand singly and upright on the cell floor and are tiny, a good millimetre long.
• Electrical Conductivity Electrical conductivity is one of the most important measured values in honey analysis.
• Emergency Queen Cell An emergency queen cell is a queen cell that a bee colony builds as an emergency measure when the queen is suddenly lost, for example through death, illness or a beekeeping error.
• Empty Comb An empty comb is a comb that has already been fully built out, with cells the bees have finished shaping, but that contains neither brood nor stores such as honey or pollen.
• Entrance Reducer The entrance reducer is a simple wood or plastic aid used to narrow the opening of the hive entrance without closing it completely.
• Estimating Colony Strength Colony strength means the approximate number of bees a colony comprises at a given point in time.

F

• Fanning Fanning is the bees beating their wings in place, thereby creating an airflow.
• Fat Body The fat body is the bee's central storage and metabolic organ and is located mainly in the abdomen.
• Feed Ring Test (AFB Sampling) The feed ring is the ring of honey and pollen cells immediately around the brood nest.
• Feed Super The feed super is a special hive box that, unlike the other boxes of a modern box hive, holds no frames but instead has a closed floor and so serves as a container for liquid feed.
• Fermentation of Honey Honey ferments when yeasts break down the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
• Flight Swarm With a flyer split, the beekeeper uses the homing behavior of the foragers to form a new colony.
• Flight Swarm with Queen Cell The flight swarm with queen cell is the second variant of the flight swarm and likewise a swarm pre-emption.
• Food Business Operator Anyone who supplies honey is, under food law, a food business operator, even as a hobby beekeeper and even when the honey is only given away to acquaintances.
• Food Comb A comb that predominantly contains capped honey or stored feed.
• Forager Bee The forager, also called the field bee, is a worker in the last stage of her life.
• Forest Honey According to the guidelines for honey, forest honey is a honeydew honey that comes entirely from plants in the forest, with parks in towns explicitly not counting as forest.
• Formic Acid Formic acid is an organic acid and one of the approved active ingredients against varroosis.
• Frame The wooden frame in which a comb hangs. It makes the comb movable, which is what makes the whole of modern beekeeping possible in the first place.
• Frame Feeder The frame feeder is a trough-shaped container that is hung into the box in place of a frame and holds feed syrup.

G

• Gentleness (Temperament) Gentleness is one of the four classic traits of performance testing.
• German Beekeepers' Association (Deutscher Imkerbund) The German Beekeepers' Association is the umbrella organization of German beekeeping.
• German Beekeepers' Honey Jar The beekeeper's honey jar with the guarantee seal of the German Beekeepers' Association is a registered trademark, not merely packaging.
• German Honey Guidelines (Leitsätze) The guidelines for honey are part of the German Food Code and describe what is generally understood by particular names such as acacia honey, rapeseed honey, or forest honey.
• German Normal Measure The German Normal Measure, DNM for short, is a frame size with outer dimensions of 370 by 223 millimeters, which was defined as the standard size in 1880 and introduced as the German Normal Measure after the Second World War to standardize the many frame sizes that had developed regionally in the Ge
• Grafting Grafting in queen rearing refers to the targeted transfer of very young bee larvae from normal worker cells into artificial queen cups.
• Granulation (Crystallization) Granulation is the everyday term for the natural crystallization of honey, in which the dissolved glucose separates out in the form of solid crystals and the honey changes from a liquid to a firm or creamy consistency.

H

• HMF (Hydroxymethylfurfural) HMF stands for hydroxymethylfurfural, a substance that forms from the sugar fructose when honey is heated or stored for a long time or incorrectly.
• Haplodiploidy In the honey bee, the queen and the workers develop from fertilized, diploid eggs, while drones develop from unfertilized, haploid eggs.
• Health Certificate The health certificate under Section 5 of the Bee Disease Ordinance is a certificate from an official veterinarian that must be presented when bee colonies are moved into the district of another authority.
• Heater Bee Heater bees, also called warming bees, are workers that actively generate heat to keep the brood nest at an even temperature.
• Hive The housing of a honey bee colony in beekeeping.
• Hive Box A box component of a modern box hive in which the frames hang.
• Hive Debris Hive debris refers to everything that accumulates in the colony and trickles down onto the hive floor: wax particles from gnawed-open cell caps, pollen residue, feed crystals, legs and wings of dead bees, and, of course, fallen varroa mites too.
• Hive Debris In beekeeping, hive debris refers to the material that, over time, falls down from the combs onto the floor of the hive.
• Hive Design (Kastenwesen) There are three castes in a bee colony: the queen as the only fully reproductive female, the workers as thousands of non-reproductive females, and the drones as several hundred males in spring and summer.
• Hive Entrance The entrance to the hive and at the same time the window through which a colony can be assessed without opening it.
• Hive Expansion Expanding means giving a growing colony more space, by hanging in frames or wax foundation, or by adding a whole hive box at once.
• Hive Floor The floor is the lowest component of the hive and carries the entrance.
• Hive Record Card The hive record card is the record kept for a single bee colony.
• Hive Scale A hive scale stands under a bee colony and records its weight.
• Hive Scent The shared scent of a colony, made up of the queen's pheromones, the comb material, the food that has been brought in, and the bees' genetic makeup.
• Hive Tool The hive tool, also called a lever chisel, is part of every beekeeper's basic equipment and accompanies practically every colony inspection.
• Honey Bees Bees are a very species-rich group of insects.
• Honey Comb A comb from the honey super that contains ripe honey.
• Honey Extractor The honey extractor is the central piece of equipment in the honey harvest.
• Honey Labeling A honey jar must carry the sales designation, the net quantity, the best-before date, the name and address of the food business operator, and the country of origin.
• Honey Regulation (Germany) The Honey Regulation (Honigverordnung) is the central legal basis for honey in Germany and transposes the European Honey Directive into national law.
• Honey Stomach The honey stomach is an expandable enlargement of the foregut in the bee's abdomen, located directly behind the wasp waist.
• Honey Super The honey super is the part of the hive that the bees use exclusively for storing and ripening nectar and honey, while brood is raised in the brood chamber below it.
• Honeydew Honeydew is not a plant product but an animal excretion that comes from aphids, scale insects, and similar insects, which suck the sugary sap from the phloem of trees and excrete the excess sugar again as sticky droplets.
• House Bee As a house bee, one refers to a worker in the first phase of her adult life, roughly from the first to the twentieth day of life.
• Humped Brood (Laying Workers) Bullet brood is the name for the characteristic, irregularly domed brood pattern that develops when drone larvae grow up in worker cells that are actually too small for them.
• Hypopharyngeal Gland The brood food glands, also called hypopharynx or hypopharyngeal glands, lie as a pair in the worker's head.

I

• Infestation Level The infestation level describes how heavily a colony is affected by the varroa mite at a given point in time, usually expressed as the ratio of the number of mites to the number of sampled bees, or as the daily natural mite drop.
• Inner Cover and Cover Foil Between the topmost box and the actual outer cover lies the inner cover.
• Instrumental Insemination In instrumental insemination, also called artificial insemination, drone semen is transferred to the queen under a stereomicroscope using a fine glass cannula.
• Interim Nucleus An interim nucleus is a method for calming a colony that has already fallen into swarming mood at the same site, without sacrificing its foraging performance.
• Introduction Cage An introduction cage is a small cage made of mesh or plastic in which an unrelated queen is hung into a colony.
• Invertase Invertase is an enzyme that the bees add to the honey with their saliva when bringing in and processing nectar or honeydew.

K

• Kuntzsch (Frame Size) The Kuntzsch frame is an older German frame size that was widespread above all in Saxony, Thuringia, and neighboring areas, where it is still used in part today.

L

• Langstroth The Langstroth hive goes back to the American clergyman and beekeeper Lorenzo Langstroth, who in 1852 patented the first hive with fully movable frames, using bee space as the principle of its design.
• Laying Worker A laying worker is a worker bee that, in a colony that has been queenless for a long time, becomes an egg-laying bee itself.
• Leaf Honeydew Leaf honey is a special form of honeydew honey that comes from aphids and similar insects living on deciduous trees such as oak or maple, as opposed to classic forest honey, which is obtained mainly from conifers such as spruce or fir.
• Liebefeld Estimation Method The Liebefeld method is a standardized procedure for assessing the strength of a bee colony much more accurately than by simply counting occupied spaces between the combs.
• Log Hive The log hive is one of the oldest artificial bee dwellings and consists of a hollowed-out tree trunk, into the side of which a hive entrance is cut and into whose interior wooden bars are fitted crosswise, from which the bees hang their combs.
• Lot Marking A lot is the totality of sales units produced or bottled under practically identical conditions.

M

• Major Flow (Mass Nectar Flow) A major flow refers to forage sources that bloom over a wide area at the same time and deliver very large amounts of nectar and pollen in a short period.
• Marking Marking is what beekeepers call marking the queen.
• Mating Nuc Box A mating nuc box is a very small hive in which a young queen is kept until mating and the start of egg laying.
• Mating Station A mating station is a remote site where only selected drone colonies are kept and where queens are mated under controlled conditions.
• Mead Mead, also called honey wine, is produced by fermenting honey in water.
• Melezitose Melezitose is a trisaccharide made up of two molecules of glucose and one molecule of fructose, occurring mainly in the honeydew of certain aphid species, especially on spruce and other conifers.
• Metamorphosis The complete transformation of the bee from egg through larva and pupa to the finished insect.
• Migratory Beekeeping Migratory beekeeping refers to moving entire bee colonies to another location, usually to use a particular nectar flow such as rapeseed, forest, or linden blossom, or to provide pollination for orchards and special crops.
• Migratory Trailer The migratory trailer is a trailer or platform on which several bee colonies are transported and managed.
• Modern Box Hive The box hive is by far the most widespread type of bee housing in Germany today.
• Mouse Guard The mouse guard closes the entrance in winter just enough that bees can pass in and out while mice stay outside.

N

• Nasonov Gland The Nasonov gland, also called the scent gland, lies at the rear end of a worker's abdomen, more precisely at the front part of the seventh tergite.
• Natural Comb (Wild Build) Comb building outside the frames, for example crosswise between the combs, beneath the top bars, or in the empty space of a box.
• Natural Comb Building Natural comb building refers to bees building their comb themselves without a preformed foundation as a guide.
• Natural Mite Drop Count The natural mite drop count records how many varroa mites die on their own and fall onto the board beneath the bee colony, without any bees needing to be removed or the colony opened.
• Nectar The sugary liquid that plants secrete in their flowers to attract pollinators.
• Nectar Flow Nectar flow is the collective term for what the bees find in their surroundings in the way of nectar, pollen and honeydew.
• Nosema (Nosematosis) Nosematosis is a disease of the midgut of adult bees.
• Notifiable Bee Diseases Since March 11, 2026, the German Animal Disease Notification Ordinance (Tierseuchenmeldeverordnung) has governed which diseases must be reported to the responsible authority.
• Nucleus Colony (Nuc) A split is a young small colony that the beekeeper forms from the material of a strong production colony.
• Nurse Bee A young worker bee that tends the brood from about the fourth day of life until the tenth or twelfth day.
• Nurse Colony (Cell Builder) The nurse colony is the colony that accepts the grafted breeding larvae, supplies them with royal jelly and rears them into queens.

O

• Ocelli In addition to the two large compound eyes, bees have three tiny simple eyes on the forehead, the ocelli.
• Oxalic Acid Oxalic acid is an approved active substance against the varroa mite and the usual active substance for the winter treatment, the so-called residual mite removal.

P

• Performance Testing Performance testing is the systematic assessment of bee colonies according to fixed traits over an entire season.
• Pheromones Scent substances that bees use to communicate within the colony.
• Pollen Pollen is the flower dust that bees collect as their only source of protein.
• Pollen Analysis (Melissopalynology) Pollen analysis, technically also called melissopalynology, is a microscopic examination method used to verify the botanical and geographical origin of honey.
• Pollen Comb A comb with stored pollen, usually forming a ring around the brood nest.
• Pollen Load (Pollen Basket) The pollen load is the pollen package a forager bee carries on the outside of her hind legs.
• Pollination Pollination means: pollen has to reach the stigma of a flower so that seeds and fruit can form.
• Polyandry Polyandry means that the queen mates with several males.
• Powdered Sugar Method The powdered sugar method is a bee-friendly procedure for estimating a colony's Varroa infestation without killing the bees taken.
• Pressed Honey Pressed honey is honey obtained by pressing combs without brood, without heating or with heating to no more than 45 degrees.
• Prime Swarm The first swarm of a colony, which leaves with the old, mated queen.
• Proboscis The bee's proboscis is a sucking and licking organ made up of several mouthparts.
• Propolis The resin mixture with which bees seal their hive and keep it low in germs.
• Pupa The developmental stage between larva and finished bee, which takes place in the capped cell.

Q

• Queen The queen is the only fully developed female in the colony.
• Queen Cell The queen cell is the special comb cell in which a new bee queen grows.
• Queen Cup Queen cups are small, cup-shaped globs of wax that bees build on the comb surface or at the comb edge, without the queen having laid an egg into them yet.
• Queen Excluder The queen excluder is a grid made of metal or plastic that is placed between the brood chamber and the honey super.
• Queen Flight Swarm The queen flight swarm is a form of swarm pre-emption: the beekeeper divides a colony in swarming mood themselves, instead of waiting for the swarm to issue.
• Queen Marking Queen marking is the marking of a queen bee with a small dot of color on the thorax, usually with a lacquer-type marking pen or a glued-on Opalith disc.
• Queen Substance Queen substance refers to the pheromone blend produced by the queen mainly in her mandibular glands.
• Queenless A bee colony that no longer has a queen is called queenless.
• Queenlessness Queenlessness means that a colony no longer has a laying queen.
• Queenright A bee colony is considered queenright when it has a present, egg-laying queen.

R

• Rear-Access Hive The rear-access hive is an older type of hive in which the beekeeper works not from above, as with today's box hive, but from the back of the fixed box.
• Refractometer A refractometer is an optical measuring device with which beekeepers can determine the water content of their honey themselves without having to send a sample to a laboratory.
• Registration Requirement for Beekeepers Anyone who wants to keep bees in Germany must notify the competent authority no later than when they start, stating the number of colonies and their location.
• Remainder Colony What remains in the hive after a swarm has left: the young bees, the capped brood and the ripening queen cells.
• Requeening The replacement of a colony's queen, either by the colony itself or by the beekeeper.
• Residues in Wax Beeswax stores foreign substances particularly reliably because it is built up from lipophilic, that is fat-loving, molecules.
• Resin (Propolis Raw Material) The popular name for propolis. Bees collect resin from buds, mainly on poplars and conifers, and mix it with wax and saliva.
• Restricted Zone If American foulbrood is officially detected at an apiary, the responsible authority declares the area within a radius of at least one kilometer around that apiary a restricted zone.
• Retinue The retinue refers to the group of young nurse bees that constantly surrounds and attends to a bee colony's queen.
• Robbing Robbing is the term for bees breaking into other colonies to steal their stores.
• Royal Jelly The brood food from the head glands of the nurse bees, also called queen jelly.

S

• Screened Bottom Board The screened bottom board is the lowest part of many modern box hives and consists of a fine-mesh screen instead of a closed wooden floor.
• Seeding Honey In beekeeping, seeding means deliberately mixing small amounts of already finely crystallized honey into liquid honey so that crystallization proceeds in a controlled and even way.
• Segeberger Hive The Segeberger hive is a box hive made of expanded polystyrene (EPS), named after the beekeeping school in Bad Segeberg in Schleswig-Holstein and very widespread especially in northern Germany.
• Settling Tank The settling tank is a large vessel, usually made of food-grade stainless steel, in which freshly extracted and strained honey can rest for a few days before bottling.
• Shake Test (Honey Ripeness) The shake test is a simple practical test with which beekeepers check before the harvest whether the honey in the combs is already ripe enough for extracting.
• Shallow Super A shallow box or half box is a box that is lower than the brood box of the same system and accordingly takes lower frames.
• Silent Supersedure The queen changeover without swarming and without any intervention by the beekeeper.
• Skimming Honey After extraction the honey runs through a sieve into the bucket and is left to stand there, covered, for a few hours.
• Smoker The smoker, also called a smoke tool or bee pipe, is the classic tool for calming bee colonies during an inspection.
• Solar Wax Melter The solar wax melter is a flat box covered with glass or twin-wall panels, in which comb remnants and cappings wax melt using only the heat of the sun.
• Spring Flow The spring flow is the first substantial nectar flow of the year that is harvested from.
• Steadiness on the Comb Steadiness on the comb describes how calmly the bees stay on the comb when the beekeeper pulls it out.
• Steam Wax Melter In the steam wax melter, whole frames are hung or placed inside and melted out with steam.
• Sting Apparatus The bee's sting apparatus is a modified ovipositor and therefore occurs only in female bees, that is in worker bees and the queen.
• Stirring Honey (Creaming) Stirring honey, or creaming, is a craft technique with which beekeepers deliberately control natural crystallization so that the honey ends up spreadable and finely creamy instead of coarse-grained and hard.
• Sulfuring Sulfuring means killing an entire bee colony with burning sulfur in the hive.
• Summer Bee Summer bees are the workers of the flow season.
• Swarm Swarming is the natural reproduction of the bee colony.
• Swarm Cell The swarm cell is a queen cell that a bee colony builds proactively when preparing for natural reproduction by swarming.
• Swarm Cluster The cluster of bees formed by a swarm that has left the hive, usually on a branch near the parent colony.
• Swarm Control Swarm control refers to the regular inspection of a bee colony during the spring and early summer months to detect in time whether it is building swarm cells.
• Swarm Pre-emption Swarm pre-emption is a method that imitates a colony's natural swarm departure instead of simply preventing it.

T

• The Bien (Colony as Superorganism) The Bien refers to the bee colony as a whole, that is, not as the sum of individual insects but as a living being in its own right.
• Top-Bar Hive The top-bar hive is a horizontal box with sloping side walls, in which the bees build their comb freely on top bars.
• Tracheae The bee's respiratory system. Instead of lungs, fine, air-filled tubes run through the entire body and supply every tissue directly with oxygen, independent of the circulation of the hemolymph.
• TrachtNet TrachtNet is not a physical network but a joint measuring network run by the bee institutes of Rhineland-Palatinate, Hesse and Bavaria that makes the nectar flow, i.e.
• Transferring Queen Cells Caging queen cells means placing capped queen cells in cages so that the queen that emerges first does not sting the others to death.
• Trap Comb The trapping comb, sometimes also called a comb cage or queen cage, is a tool of biotechnical, that is, chemical-free Varroa control.
• Trickle Flow Trickle flow refers to the small-scale intake of nectar and pollen spread across many plant species, in which the scale rises only slightly or not at all, while the colony is nonetheless supplied continuously.

U

• Uncapping Uncapping means removing the thin wax cappings with which the bees seal ripe honey cells.

V

• Varietal Honey Varietal honey is honey that comes predominantly from a particular plant species and may therefore be sold with a botanical name such as rapeseed honey, acacia honey, or linden honey.
• Varroa Board The varroa board, also called a diagnostic board, varroa insert or floor insert, is the tool beekeepers use to catch the debris falling from the bee colony.
• Varroa Mite (Varroa destructor) The Varroa mite is the most significant parasite of the honey bee.
• Varroa Treatment Concept A varroa treatment concept is a plan coordinated across the whole beekeeping year, combining biotechnical measures and authorized treatment products, with which the infestation of a colony by the varroa mite is to be kept below a dangerous threshold.
• Veterinary Medicinal Products Any product used to treat a disease in a bee colony is a veterinary medicinal product and must have gone through a state authorization procedure.
• Veterinary Office (Germany) The veterinary office of the district or independent city is, for the beekeeper, the responsible authority in all matters of disease control law.
• Vitellogenin Vitellogenin is a protein that serves as a yolk precursor in many animals.

W

• Waggle Dance The dance language for more distant nectar sources.
• Warm-Way and Cold-Way Warm way and cold way describe how the combs inside a hive are aligned relative to the entrance.
• Warré Hive The Warré hive goes back to the French priest and beekeeper Émile Warré, who described it as the Ruche Populaire, or people's hive.
• Wash Method (Mite Count) The alcohol wash, also called the washing method, is considered particularly accurate among the common methods for determining Varroa infestation.
• Water Content in Honey Water content is one of the most important quality characteristics of honey, because it shows whether the bees have thickened the nectar or honeydew sufficiently and whether the beekeeper has extracted honey that was harvested ripe.
• Wax Adulteration Beeswax is occasionally adulterated with cheaper substances, in recent times above all with stearin and paraffin, and formerly also with tallow.
• Wax Cycle The wax cycle refers to the path of beeswax within a beekeeping operation: the bees build out combs, the beekeeper cuts worn-out or surplus combs out of the frames, melts them down and has new foundation cast from them, which is hung back into the colonies.
• Wax Foundation A thin, embossed sheet of wax that is fused into a frame as a building template.
• Wax Gland Workers have eight paired wax glands on the underside of the abdomen, one on each of the ventral scales of the third to sixth segments.
• Wax Scale Wax scales are the small, colorless and translucent flakes of wax that a worker bee exudes on the underside of her abdomen.
• Weisel (Queen) The queen of a bee colony and the only fully developed female bee in it.
• Winter Bee Winter bees are the workers reared in late summer and early autumn that carry the colony through the winter.
• Wintering Wintering preparation is everything that prepares a colony for the cold season after the last honey harvest.
• Withdrawal Period The withdrawal period is the length of time that must pass after the last application of a veterinary medicinal product before products from the treated animal may be placed on the market.
• Worker Bee Workers are the female bees that do the everyday work in the colony.

Z

• Zander The Zander size is one of the most commonly used frame sizes in Germany and was developed at the beginning of the twentieth century by the zoologist and bee researcher Enoch Zander together with the beekeeper Johann Merz.