by Corrie Reed
Honeybees evolved approximately 30 million years ago. All but one species evolved in the tropical forests of southern Asia. The one species, Apis mellifera, evolved in Africa. It spread across the continent, throughout Europe, and to parts of Asia. As the species traveled, it gradually developed the ability to survive cold winters (still the only species with this ability). Beekeepers later brought Apis mellifera to North America, South America, and Australia- it remains the primary bee for beekeeping today.
Because honeybees must survive the cold winter months, they produce enough honey to store. While other species of bees only gather enough food to meet their daily needs, honeybees must produce a huge surplus. In cold climates, they must store as much as 55 pounds of honey to survive the winter since they do not hibernate.
Honeybees have a ready work force with the start of spring. While other bees are busy building nests and raising young, honeybees are already collecting nectar. It is this extra few weeks of collecting that is the key to their success. They eat as much as they collect during the rest of the year.
Honeybees are social bees that form complex societies within a hive. A beehive contains one colony and may contain as many as 60 thousand bees within it. Although there are many bees in the hive, there are only three types of bees: queen, drone, and worker.
Queen: The largest type of bee in a colony is the queen bee. There is only one in each hive and she may live for up to four years. A queen’s primary function is egg laying; she will lay up to 1,500 eggs a day during warm weather and over one million in her lifetime. Twelve worker bees are devoted to the care of the queen- guarding, cleaning and feeding her.
Drone: Drone bees are smaller than the queen and are the only male bees in the colony. Each hive will have approximately one hundred drones that will live for about eight weeks. Drones mate with the queen.
Worker: Worker bees are the smallest bees within a colony and are all female. Worker bees make up the majority of the bees within the hive and will live about six weeks. They perform a variety of tasks to maintain the hive: building wax comb, cleaning the hive, making honey, feeding larvae, collecting nectar, and guarding the hive. Workers are the only bees that visit flowers.
Bees communicate with one another by pheromones, sound, and dancing.
The release of pheromones stimulates behaviors such as giving food, mating, or attacking. The most important pheromone is produced by the queen, queen substance. Worker bees collect the queen substance and spread it to other bees throughout the hive. Its presence assures the bees that the queen is alive and healthy and will prevent the workers from raising a new queen.
Bees make loud buzzing sounds by vibrating their wing muscles. Bees announce that it’s time to swarm with one type of buzz. Another type of buzzing tells the bees where to find food. Bees also use buzzing to communicate with unborn queens.
Bees use dancing to communicate the location of food; this is important because the best sources are constantly changing. Field bees will relay the location of flowers with either a round dance or a waggle dance. The round dance is performed by circling in one direction and then back in the other direction. This dance means that food is nearby (within 100 yards) and does not give an exact location. A waggle dance is performed when food is further away and allows the field bees to draw a map of sorts. A bee will dance a half circle, turn, and run straight while wagging her tail; she then dances a half circle in the other direction. A waggle dance will tell the other bees exactly where the flowers are located.
Honey bees provide us with honey for eating and wax for candles, but their most valuable contribution is crop pollination.
Bees visit flowers to collect nectar for making honey. When a bee lands on a blossom to collect it, the bee becomes dusted with pollen. The bee then flies to another blossom and the pollen falls into the new blossom's stigmas- pollinating the blossom. Now, a fruit or vegetable can grow.
Honeybees pollinate more crops than any other insect. Some farmers keep honeybees on the farm year round enlisting the help of beekeepers to care for them. Other farmers must have several hundred colonies trucked in to pollinate the fields. When their plantings are in full bloom, the hives are placed in the middle of the farm. The bees are then set loose to pollinate the fields. Without them, a farmer may produce one third less fruit and vegetables. It's no wonder that honeybees have become such a valuable partner for today's farmers.
Sources:
- Micucci, Charles. The Life and Times of the Honeybee. New York: Ticknor
& Fields, 1995.
- Schwabacher, Martin. Bees. New York: Benchmark Books, 2003.