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One mouthful in three
of the foods you eat directly or indirectly depends on
pollination by honey bees. The value of honey bee pollination
to US agriculture is more than $14 billion annually.
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Farmers contract with
migratory beekeepers, who move millions of bee hives to fields
each year just as crops flower.
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?Honeybees are social
insects. They depend on one another for survival.
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Bees live
in groups called colonies. A colony can have tens of
thousands of bees.
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There is only one queen
in each colony. She is the mother of the colony, laying
more than 1,800 eggs a day. She has to lay that many eggs,
because workers bees only live a few weeks during honey-making
season in the spring and summer.
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Bees make honey from
nectar. Nectar is a sweet liquid found inside flower blossoms.
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The
bees collect the nectar and carry it to the colony
in pouches within their bodies.
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The secret ingredient
that turns nectar into honey is bee “spit.” Chemicals
in the bees’ saliva help change the nectar into sugars.
The nectar/saliva mixture is then stored in the beeswax
comb by the workers.
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The younger bees fan
the nectar with their wings until much of the water has
evaporated. Then they put wax caps on it and save it to
eat in the winter.
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Beekeepers harvest
honey just like any other crop. When they take honey from
a hive, they are very careful to leave enough so the bees
can survive the winter.
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One bee would have
to make 154 trips, carrying tiny amounts of nectar from
the flower to the hive, just to make one teaspoonful of
honey.
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If one bee had to make
a pound of honey all by herself, she would have to spend
160,000 hours and make 80,000 trips. That would be the
same as flying around the world three times.
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One worker
bee actually makes only 1⁄12 of
a teaspoon of honey in her lifetime. But working
together, a colony of bees may bring in as much as
50 pounds of nectar in a day and make 200 or 300 pounds
of honey in a year.
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Honeybees communicate
through their movements. They attract the attention of
other bees and let them know where to find nectar using
movements that look like a dance. The movements show the
other bees which way to go and how far.
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The bees
usually move in the form of a figure eight. Slow
dancing means the nectar is far away. Fast dancing
means it is nearby.
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Beeswax comes out in
white flakes from glands under the bee’s abdomen.
The wax is white at first
but gradually turns a golden color.
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About 8 million pounds
of beeswax is used in the US each year.
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People
use beeswax to make candles, lipsticks, lotions, shoe
polish, crayons, chewing gum, and floor wax.
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In the past
sculptors used bleached bee’s wax to hide mistakes
in their sculptures. The best sculptors were proud
to say their statues were “sine cera,” or
without wax.
That is where we get the word “sincere.”
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When
one bee colony gets too crowded the
bees split up and start a new colony. The workers
begin to raise a new queen.
When it is almost time for the new
queen to hatch, the old queen will
gather several thousand bees to go
away with her. This is called “swarming.” The bees fly in circles
around the queen until she lands. The other bees land around her, clinging
to each other in a great heap. When the swarm has settled it sends out scouts
to find a new home.
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When bees are swarming,
they will not attack, because they have no home to
protect.
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Honeybees will
sting only if they
are frightened
or harmed. If you
are stung you should
remove the stinger
immediately by scraping
it off with a fingernail
or any straight-edged instrument.
Do not try to pull it out,
because this will force more
venom into your skin.
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A worker
bee will die a few hours after
stinging, because the stinger
has a barb at the point which
the bee cannot pull out once
it is stuck in your skin.
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Bees pollinate
flowers as they fly from one to another, gathering nectar.
Pollen is sticky and clings to the honeybee’s
body. When the bee flies to the next flower,
the pollen will rub or fall off.
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Bees pollinate
more than 16 percent of the flowering plant species, ensuring
that we'll have blooms in our gardens.
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Honey bees that are
not managed by beekeepers are considered feral rather than
wild because all our common honey bees were introduced to
the New World from Europe.
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Honey is the only food
that doesn't spoil.
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Honeybees are the only
insects that produce food eaten by humans.
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Conquering Spaniards
found that the natives of 16th Century AD Mexico and Central
America had already developed beekeeping.
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It was the accepted
practice in Babylon 4,000 years ago that for a month after
the wedding, the bride's father would supply his son-in-law
with all the mead he could drink. Mead is a honey beer
and because their calendar was lunar based, this period
was called the honey month, which we know today as the
honeymoon.
