"You never can tell with bees" - Winnie the Pooh.
“What is not good for the swarm is not good for the bee” - Marcus Aurelius (the Roman Emperor).
I have great respect for bees: not only because they provide nutritious and tasty honey, but above all because of their wisdom. Yes, we could learn a lot from them - first of all, organization. It is no coincidence that the saying "as busy as a bee" was created. Everyone has something to do in the hive and everyone is needed for the proper functioning of the family.
The pillar of the family is a mother - a queen of bee, who gives life to thousands of bees, but she would not be able to do so if the bee-workers didn’t provide her with food, and the drones with sperm. The mother leaves the hive for mating purposes. When she transforms from a child into a young lady, she starts dating. Flies out of the hive in search of bachelors. When she finds a place where the drones gather, the mating begins. The wedding party takes place in the air high above the ground (even 40 m). The queen is polygamous. During the mating season, she makes sex with a few or even a dozen of lovers. Then young queen returns to the hive and from this time begins her work, which is laying eggs. On average, there are about 1,5 thousand of them daily. The bee-mother lives 3-5 years. The older she is, the fewer eggs she lays.
The next time, when the bee queen leaves the hive, is when she gives way to the new, young one. The elderly queen, along with the strongest bees, leaves her current home and looks for a new residence. Earlier, queen cells are created in the hive, from which successors hatch. The one who is born first takes over. As she matures, goes on dates with neighborhood guys and the family's life cycle continues. It is a natural process but beekeepers are very afraid of it because they lose a significant number of bees (60% or even 80% - depending on the strength of the colony), and it takes some time (about 2 weeks) for a new bee queen to start producing eggs. This process is called "swarming".
The mother has the sting for one purpose only: to duel with another queen. It may happen when several mothers hatch at the same time. The duels of the bee queens are honorable. At the moment when the fighting mothers could kill each other at the same time, they give up and start a new duel after a while. They cannot both die. The welfare of the family is paramount. The replacement of the queen doesn’t always have to resemble "Game of Thrones", sometimes the throne is inherited. The old mother lays an egg, from which a successor is born, and the two then coexist in the hive. Without the queen, the bee family is unable to function and dies, so the mother is cared for very much. It is served by an entourage of bees that feed and protect her. The queen is fed royal jelly, thanks to which she lives for so long. Each queen also gives off its specific scent, which means that bees from a given family know where their home is, because for bees the home is where their mother is.
The worker bee lives about 5 weeks in the summer because the greatest energy expenditure for this small insect is gaining food, taking care of the house and bee babies. Bee-gatherers collect nectar, honeydew, pollen, water and balsamic substances needed to protect the living place (propolis) and bring it to the hive. Note - only the oldest bees ("gatherers") sting because their role is also to protect the family. The young bees work in the hive as workers and warehouse workers. They have very little venom, which is why beekeepers look into their hives during the day, especially in the first half of the day, when bees that may be attacking are outside. They attack when they sense a threat. Bee could be stimulated by people behaving nervously (e.g., waving their hands like windmills), as well as curious trying to experience, e.g., with inserting a stick into the exit of the hive. Bees may also not tolerate someone's odour. They also don't like dark colors and shaggy things. Bees usually don't attack as they are too busy for that. However, when they feel that something threatens the family, they will fight without hesitation, even at the cost of their own lives. When they put the sting deep into the opponent's body, trying to pull it out, they lose part of their digestive tract with it and die.
The last category are bee – guys - named drones. In that moment, all the ladies reading this article will smile because the drones won't do anything to themselves. Bees feed and serve them. Left unattended on a honeycomb, a drone will starve to death! It needs to be served by women. Bee guys are big, slow and cumbrous. They only come to life during the queens’ mating season. They massed in one place, in the air, where come their friends from other hives and even apiaries, and wait for young bee queens in a nice, social atmosphere. We can make fun of them but without drones the family would not survive. It is only thanks to their participation in a date with the young queen, she becomes inseminated and gives life to thousands of bees for several years. However, bees are practical creatures. They do not tolerate uselessness, so when winter comes, first the bees stop caring for their men, and then those poor fellows, weakened by lack of food, are taken under their armpits and… thrown out of the hive. It may not be "humane" but bees reduce the staffing level for winter to an absolute minimum, because in winter they are not able to obtain food and the whole family must be satisfied with what they had collected during the pollination season.
In order to survive the winter, bee-workers gather around their mother, limiting their daily activities to a minimum. Then they eat little and mainly focus on heating the swarm (the temperature inside it is between 20 and 30oC. If it is -20oC outside, then bees level this temperature, raising the heat by 40-50oC). Bee-workers raise the temperature with their own bodies by moving their trunk muscles. This way, a single bee is able to raise its body temperature by up to 38oC.
Bees come to life in the early spring (February, although it depends on the weather). On the first warmer day, they fly out to… poop because they don't do their business at home. The next stage is increasing the temperature of the bee-population in the hive to 34,5oC. Then the mother begins to lay eggs and the family starts a new season.
We have domesticated bees but they may cope without us if necessary. We are the ones who will not be able to do without them, and this must be remembered. I am not talking about honey or other priceless supplements obtained from bee products, such as pollen, propolis or venom, but about their role in nature. Without them, we are doomed. This sounds lofty? Simple, most plants need insects to function and develop. Without bees - these plants will not produce, for example, fruit and will not reproduce. Lack of plants - this is not only a problem for vegans and vegetarians, without them there will be no food for carnivores too. It is worth understanding it and have to stop exterminating these insects: poisoning them with pesticides or simply murdering them. Wild bees play a very important role, especially in urban centers, so we should think about them, for instance, when growing flowers on the balcony.
My dream was to breed bees. I come from a family with beekeeping traditions. As a child, I used to play in my great-grandmother's apiary, sitting next to the hives and no bee stung me (but I didn't come up with the idea of putting a stick in the hive’s gate). I treat sourcing honey as an addition. For me, the most important thing was to find a place for bees where they could live peacefully and develop. I had had such a place in the Suwałki Region (Nord-East of Poland), far from civilization, among not sprayed meadows and forests, but had no time. Working in a corporation, you may rarely watch the sunset, let alone bees, which work a lot for 8 months a year. Changing my lifestyle allowed me to make my dream come true. Every year is different and I am constantly learning how to properly care for my little friends and I am learning from them… real life.
The above information is presented in a simplified manner. The behavior of bees and their lives are such a vast topic that if I wanted to collaborate on it thoroughly, I would have to create a dissertation. It is only about presenting basic knowledge about these amazing creatures. For those who are interested, I develop the topic of apitherapy training (contact: vincinatura.pl).
A few details for those interested in the topic (based on: "Breeding bees" (org. “Hodowla pszczół) collective work, 2008):
1. There are several tens of thousands of bees in a bee colony (in summer their number is greater: from 30 to 50 thousand bees; in winter it drops to about 10 thousand bee
2. The number of drones depends on the strength of the family and ranges from several hundred to several thousand individuals (1-3 thousand).
3. The development of a bee (from egg to adult form) comes to respectively: 16 days for the queen, 21 days for the worker, 24 days for the drone.
4. The activity of workers during the feeding season can be divided into two periods: work at home (about 3 weeks after hatching), outside the hive (about 2 weeks).
5. Bees born in the autumn period live for about 6 months.
6. Collecting one doze of nectar takes a collector-bee from 30 minutes to over an hour. With a small amount of nectar on the flowers, this time may be extended to more than 2 hours.
7. During the day, bees perform about 10 nectar flights. In case of pollen - about 15 flights are needed, while they carry water at one time, so the number of flights for water during the day may be 50 or even 100.
8. To collect 1 kg of honey, bees must fly from 200 thousand flowers (linden) to 2 million flowers (phacelia), which means 80 - 160 thousand flights.
9. In search of food, bees cover distances of up to 3 km (in the absence of forage in the area, they may venture up to 8 km).
10. During a year a bee colony uses 15-30 kg of pollen and 60-80 kg of honey for its own needs.
Description of photos:
[1] A bee on phacelia.
[2] Bees on blooming oregano.
[3] Bees on linden flowers.
[4] Meadow specially planted for bees: phacelia and buckwheat.
[5] Swarm: the moment of the colony moving into an empty hive.
If you like the pictures of bees in this article, some of them can be purchased on the Dreamstime.
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