All for one and one for All
This blog’s title is the famous motto from “The Three Musketeers”; you may ask what does it have to do with bees? Everything. Day in and day out everything the honey bee does is for the sole purpose of ensuring the hive flourishes.
The honey bee is totally dedicated to the hive during their short 6 week lifespan where they are engineers, caretakers, soldiers and hunter / gatherers. For a small insect they have a unique and complex social / communication structure that focuses on two and only two critical objectives:
Expanding the hive
Making and storing food for the winter
While the bee’s life cycle will be covered in depth as part of a future blog, here are a few examples:
As newborn bees exit their cells they immediately get to work cleaning the hive, feeding the young larva, and taking care of the queen. During this time they also produce or repair damaged comb and propolize all of the cracks or seams in the hive to eliminate air drafts and control moisture in the hive.
They guard the hive from intruders which could be other bee’s, insects, and even mice. If you have the chance to open a hive, you just might be greeted by the guard bees as they come out. Most often they do not sting if you are careful and take your time.
During the last part of their life the bees are foraging for food; bees can fly ~ 20 mph and can travel up on average ~2-3 miles to find a food or water source. They carry pollen to the hive in their pollen baskets and nectar in a ‘honey sac’ until they return to the hive where it is stored. A honey bee forager will collect ~1/12th of a teaspoon of honey in her lifetime.
Honey bees can’t talk so they have to find other ways to communicate:
The primary form of communication is through ‘phermones’ - a chemical substance that affects the behavior of the bees. Both the Queen and worker bees emit phermones; a good example would be the guard bees - they emit a phermone that will ‘rally the troops’ against a potential threat.
Honey bees also communicate the location of food sources and water through physical means; called a waggle dance. This dance will communicate to the other foraging bees the direction and distance of flowers and water sources; the pattern is similar to a figure 8 with the speed and size of the pattern providing the details of where the bees need to fly.
Simple creatures with complex social and communication methods; ~50,000 in a hive all working toward the greater good, seems like all of us could learn something…..
If you liked this blog or have any questions, drop a comment….
Until next time….be good, bee the change….