Bees and Honey, Honey and Bees

1. Honeybees have yellow bodies with black stripes.

2. Male bees go out to gather nectar from flowers and are the principle workforce inside the hive.

3. Worker bees select one job in the hive when they are young and do it for the rest of their lives.

4. Bees have no use for pollen themselves, but suck it up and spray it over flowers because they somehow know that pollination is important for the ecology.




Honey Bee, Worker Bee on Flower, UK Photographic Print
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5. If a colony of bees has enough honey to meet their needs, they will stop working.

6. Male bees have stingers

7. All the bees in a colony are cousins.

8. Beekeepers enslave the bees for their own profit. Their slogan is, "They make the honey, and we make the money."

9. Beekeepers use smoke to suffocate the bees.

10. Many people are petrified of bees.

1. False. Honeybees have brown bodies with black stripes. The yellow-and-black insects are yellowjackets, the wasps that go after your picnic and give honeybees a bad name.

2. False. Male bees, appropriately named "drones", do nothing at all except to fly out to look for and mate with a virgin queen (and die in the process). The rest of the time, they lounge around inside the hive, being fed and cared for by the females, who outnumber them about 200 to 1. In the fall, the females push them all outside, where they starve to death.

3. False. Worker bees, all sterile females, do many different tasks in the hive, depending on their age. Young worker bees clean the hive and feed the larvae. When their royal jelly producing glands begin to atrophy, they begin building comb cells. They progress to other within-colony tasks as they become older, such as receiving nectar and pollen from foragers, and guarding the hive. Later still, a worker takes her first orientation flights and finally leaves the hive and typically spends the remainder of her six-week life as a forager, gathering nectar and pollen from flowering plants.




Closeup of a Honey Bee Visiting a Red Flower Photographic Print Buy at AllPosters.com


4. False. Bees bring back pollen to the hive and convert it into "bee bread", their source of protein. Honey is their carbohydrate. They eat nothing else besides these two foods.

5. False. As long as there are enough flowers, enough workers, and enough room in the hive, bees will continue to make honey, even though it's too much for them to use. This is why beekeepers can take the surplus honey without depriving the bees.

6. False. Only female bees have stingers. The male bee's similar organ is for sex.

7. False. All the bees in a colony are sisters and brothers, the offspring of the queen bee.

8. False. Unlike cows, bees cannot be domesticated, contained, or trained. They will do whatever they want. The best that beekeepers can do is give them a decent home and fields of flowers and hope they'll stick around.

9. False. Smoke calms the bees and when used in moderation will not harm them.

10. True. One tiny insect, especially in a car, will make many folks go nuts.

There are all sorts of resources out there to help you learn about beekeeping (the beneficial agricultural art of keeping bees). Here are some that may be helpful for you:
1. First Lessons in Beekeeping
2. Beekeeping Success
3. The Barefoot Beekeeper
4. Discover Beekeeping
5. How to Start Beekeeping

No matter which of the above resources you get, you may need to check with your local authorities to see if there are any restrictions on beekeeping. If you live in a rural area (farmland), most farmers will be happy to see you with your beehives (because the bees pollinate their crops and give them better yields). Also, in no time flat, you'll be having a lot of honey to work with. Some of these references can give you ideas on how to harvest the honey and how to sell it at local farmers' markets.

Honeycomb with Bee Photographic Print Buy at AllPosters.com

Although they might not be doing advanced algebra, trigonometry, or calculus, bees have recently been reported to be able to count.

I'm not sure how many fingers and toes they have, but they have 6 legs and two wings -- so you think that they'd be able to count to 8. However, scientists have discovered that bees can count to four. (Maybe they use only one side of their body?)

In an experiment cooked up by an Australian scientist from the University of Queensland and a Swedish researcher, they determined that bees can count, but no further than the number 4.

Of course, whether this is "real counting" or just "pattern recognition" (one stripe versus two stripes versus three stripes versus four stripes), is another question.

And the bees aren't talking.

Squid graphic courtesy of Squidoo Squid Graphics For Your Lenses! by GreekGeek.