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- Honey Bee and Pollinators
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Apis mellifera, often spelled as a "honeybee", is the most common of the nine honey-producing bee species. Bees are actually social insects: they live as a single unit called a bee colony – the latter includes a queen bee, tens of thousands of female worker bees, as well as some male representatives, a.k.a. drones. The queen bee is the only bee that lays eggs in a normally functioning colony.
Modern beekeepers use crates called beehives, invented and made by man, and they contain rows of wooden frames with beeswax foundations – the latter are the empty spots for building wax cells and complete honeycombs. Hives are designed to provide beekeepers with ease of work with their bees and at the same time improved living environment for the bees, depending on the required volume, microclimate, protection from winds, moisture, ventilation, for better hygiene – to name a few.
Why are bees important?
A number of products come from the honeybees – and people use them: honey, beeswax, bee glue (propolis), bee pollen, perga (bee bread), royal jelly, dead bee “ointments”, bee venom, as well as hive air for inhalations – in cases of lung issues.
Moreover, bees provide an invaluable service to humanity by pollinating the blossom of fruit and vegetables, as well as other flowering grasses, shrubs and trees. Pollination occurs while bees collect nectar or pollen, thus helping wildflowers and crops reproduce (yields increase) facilitating food-producing farms to have larger volumes of produce – as well as of higher quality.
Undoubtedly, honeybees are important, yet it should be noted there are about 20,000 other species of bees in the world that also pollinate plants. Some do pollinate only specific species of plants, and if their pollinator disappears, so will the plant.
How do bees collect honey, pollen and resins?
Older worker bees get older, as until recently they have been beehive bees, do not know how to translate to become “food collectors”. The latter can reach flying distances of up to 5-6 km (4 miles) a day. When a bee finds a source of nectar in the wild, it returns to the hive, where it “informs” the other worker bees of the source location. Bees communicate through the so-called “bee dance” – it delivers all the necessary information, such as direction and distance.
Nectar is a major ingredient in honey as well as a major source of energy for the bees. Using a long straw-like tongue, honeybees suck nectar droplets from the plant blossom.
Pollen or resin accumulates on the hind legs of the bee in the pollen basket.
Back in the hive, the worker bees pass the nectar on – to each other within the hive – and process it. When the nectar reaches the bee’s honey stomach, the latter begins to break down the complex sugars of the nectar into more simple sugars, less prone to crystallization, or becoming solid. This process is called “inversion”. The nectar is then dehydrated to contain only 18 to 20% of water, a method aided by the rapid swinging of the bees' wings called “ventilation”. After the nectar is dehydrated and turned into honey, the bees seal it in hexagonal cells with a thin layer of beeswax the bees produce themselves. So being sealed and thanks to its low moisture and natural antibacterial properties, honey can remain edible for hundreds of years.
When the nectar is in short supply, some bees steal food from other hives weaker or fallen (a.k.a. dead) hives. As honey is the main food of worker bees, colonies rely on the accumulated reserves in the active season they use later to survive the winter and the time when there is no nectar in nature or temperatures are too low for active flight.
Why do bees sting?
A worker bee feels threatened mostly when there are people near the beehive; if so, it can stick/jab its venomous barbed sting into the object it perceives as a threat. This is a last resort for the bees, as the sting is pulled out of the bee, which in turn kills it. As this defensive property is a reflex, beekeepers use smoke to replace one reflex with another. In the presence of smoke, bees begin to feed abundantly on honey and prepare to leave the hive, under “danger of fire”. Nowadays, bees have lost the ability to leave the hive in case of fire, yet they have managed to preserve their primary reflex. Thus, one hive-guarding reflex has been replaced by another one while the beekeeper can handle the bees without being stung and without provoking bees to unwanted death.
Bees and bee products
Due to the high sugar content and its excellent taste, honey is a fav treat for young and old. The taste of honey is a mix of nectars collected from the flowers/blossoms bees have “visited” at a moderate distance from the beehive.
Another widely known product is beeswax, secreted by the bees’ glandular secretions – bees use it as a building material to make hexagonal cells, where the queen lays eggs and bees multiply, as well as to store honey and pollen. Beeswax is known as a product of over 100 uses, including the production of wax candles, cosmetic goods, soap, wax, impregnator dyes – to name a few.
In addition, bee products – honey, propolis, royal jelly, bee sting, bee larvae, etc. – are used in medicine. These commodities are often advertised as parts of medicinal/medical ingredients or as dietary supplements in traditional medicine.
Different species of bees have different roles as pollinators, together with some species of bats, whether it is specialized pollination in order to maintain biodiversity or large-scale pollination of crops. For this reason, in addition to honeybees, we need all kinds of pollinators and their preservation must take place in its entirety.
