Farm Animal Facts: Bees
Farm Animal Facts:Introduction and Selection Page
Bees are fascinating creatures, the buzzing of bees as they progress from flower to flower collecting pollen and nectar is a pleasant sound on a warm sunny summer's day. Most of us know that bees make honey and pollinate flowering plants, but what else do you know about these fascinating creatures.
Below is a random selection of interesting or unusual facts about Bees
Farm Animal Facts:Introduction and Selection Page
Bees are fascinating creatures, the buzzing of bees as they progress from flower to flower collecting pollen and nectar is a pleasant sound on a warm sunny summer's day. Most of us know that bees make honey and pollinate flowering plants, but what else do you know about these fascinating creatures.
Below is a random selection of interesting or unusual facts about Bees
- Famous bee quotations
That which is not good for the beehive
cannot be good for the bees.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Give and Take...
For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life
And to the flower a bee is a messenger of love
And to both, bee and flower,
the giving and the receiving is a need and an ecstasy.
Kahlil Gibran - Honey bees have been kept for both their honey and wax for thousands of years. Cave paintings found in Spain dating back 8000 years depict scenes of people collecting honey.
- With the exception of Antarctica, bees are found in every habitat on the planet that contains insect-pollinated flowering plants. Bumble bees however are absent from the southern hemisphere and evolved in the Himalayas.
- Bees have been around an incredibly long time; the oldest known bee fossil is 100 million years old, bees evolved step by step long with flowering plants in the middle of the Cretaceous period.
Before bees and flowering plants evolved, all plants reproduced by means of a process called nemophily or wind pollination, whereby pollen is carried by the wind to fertilise seeds, rather like today's conifers and many other plants continue to do. During the process of evolution plants began to produce flowers with male and female structures called anthers and stigmas respectively. Pollen, which contains the reproductive cells, needs to be physically transported from the anthers of the flowers to the stigmas by insects and other animals. One such animal vital in the process of pollination is the bee. - The Egyptians and other ancient peoples observed and learnt from the and learnt from the
co-operative organisation of bees, the various assignments of worker bees transporting nectar and pollen, caring for the young, cleaning and building combs, guarding and protecting the hive. Bees were the emblems of courage and diligence and the queen a symbol of royalty. - Bees mate on the wing whilst in huge swarms. However it was not until as late as the 17th century that it was realised that bees reproduced sexually and not spontaneously (parthenogenetically) as many people once thought. In the 1660s Jam Swammerdam discovered female sexual organs as he was examining a queen bee under a microscope.
- Bees can fly up to fifteen miles an hour.
- Bees have five eyes. Two large compound eyes and three simple eyes.
- Bees in Religion and mythology.
Bees and their hives are the features of numerous cultures, religious traditions and mythology and they appear in religious imagery and their honey and pollen is used in religious observances. The Egyptians made the bee a solar insect born from the tears of the sun god Ra which landed on the desert sand. The Egyptians also placed bees and honey into tombs as offerings to the spirits of the dead. Sealed pots of honey were found in the grave goods of Pharaohs such as Tutankhamun. In middle Eastern, Asian and other ancient traditions bees, referred to as "beings of Fire", were considered as symbols of purity and represented souls. In the Christian tradition the image of a bee was used in funerary motifs to symbolise the resurrected soul. The bee hive with its communal organised society became the metaphor for the type of chaste orderly and charitable lives which monastic communities in the Christian tradition aimed to achieve. There are numerous references to bees and honey in the bible; the promised land is referred to as a "land flowing with milk and honey" Bees became the symbols of purity, chastity, virginity and of the virgin Mary because they were at one time considered to be parthenogenetic or arise from unfertilised eggs. Although wrongly assumed, see above, this purity meant that candles made from bees wax were considered ideal for burning in churches. Kamadeva, the Hindu love god, carries a bow with a string made of honeybees. - Only the female bees are pollinators and have a structure on their legs called a pollen basket that no other insect including wasps has. The male bee does not of course have a pollen basket. The basket is constructed of a row of stiff hairs that form a hollow space on the outside of the bee's legs, most usually her back legs. The bee combs grains of pollen into each of the baskets every time she visits a flower. In addition pollen also attaches itself to her hair. During a typical collection trip a honey bee visits 50 to 100 flowers.
- To produce one ounce of honey, bees travel an average of 1600 round trips of up to 6 miles per trip. Bees travel a distance equal to 4 times around the earth in order to produce just 2 pounds of honey.
- Bees collect nectar by sucking it up with their specially adapted long slender hairy tongue called the proboscis and store it, until they return to the hive, in an anterior section of the digestive tract near their throats called the crop. It is the nectar that is made into honey which bees store in large quantities in the hive for use as food.
- A worker bee will produce only 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey in the course of her entire lifetime. It takes thirty-five pounds of honey to provide enough energy for a small colony of bees to survive the winter. In just one day a productive hive of usually 60,000 bees can produce and store about two pounds of honey.
- It may surprise you to know that there are nearly 20,000 known species of bees, the most familiar being the bumble bee and the honey bee. There are 4,000 indigenous species In the USA alone and here in the UK there are about 250 or more species of native bee. The most common type of bees in the western hemisphere are the sweat bees. These bees are very small and are often mistaken for wasps or flies. After the honey and bumble bee most people are aware of the African killer bee. The honey bee of course is the species of bee from whom humans take honey for food and wax to make candles and other products. Wild honey and other bees such as the honey bee once had their habitats in places with an abundance of flowering plants such as woodland, meadows, orchards and in gardens. In the UK there are virtually no wild honey bees left, this is the result of the parasitic varroa mite and the viruses it carries. There is at the present time no cure. There are other factors in the decline of honey and other bees which you may read about further down. Honey bees are also cultivated bees, factory farmed for their honey and wax. Cultivated honey bees have however not been exempt from a drastic decline in numbers due to similar factors. Honey bees have been introduced to nearly all parts of the world by humans; it is thought that the species originated in India.
- Native bees do not make honey that we can use but are important pollinators for flowers, herbs and some crops, such as oranges, apples, cherries, tomatoes, zucchinis, squash, and many others. A more comprehensive list is included further down
Bumble bee
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Honey bee
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Here in the UK there were twenty seven species of bumble bee, sadly though two have become extent within the last seventy years. Today more than twenty five percent of native species are listed as endangered, on the brick of extinction, the treat of extinction is considered critical
- Bees feed on nectar, primarily as a source of energy, and pollen, mostly for protein and other nutrients. Most of the pollen collected by bees is used to feed the larvae.
- Flying from flower to flower bees collect pollen and nectar from the plants they visit. But did you know that certain species of bees, for example many solitary bees, do not pollinate just any flower and instead collect pollen from one or a few selected species of flower only, often called oligoleges or special pollinators these bees have a narrow preference concerning the collection of pollen, however they will collect nectar from a variety of plants. Flowers which attract bees are usually yellow, blue and purple. The collecting of pollen by bees benefits both organisms; the bees receives nutrition from the pollen collected from the flowers, while the flowers become pollinated, many plants depend on bees to spread pollen in order to reproduce. The bees make honey from the nectar and use both honey and pollen as food. To make just one pound of honey worker bees in a hive have to tap about two million flowers and fly approximately 55,000 miles to do so. A good proportion of the food we eat depends upon bee pollination. In agriculture, farmers hire commercial bee keepers to bring their bees to the fields when the crops are ready to produce flowers for the bees to collect the pollen and nectar for their hives and in the process the plants are pollinated
- Bees are the symbols of industry and co-operation. The familiar saying "as busy as a bee" is of course derived from the industrious nature of bees. Honey bees in particular are known the world over for their production of honey and have consequently become symbols of work, co-operation, busyness, organisation and obedience. Social bees, honey and bumble bees, live in colonies and are co-operative, organized, industrious and intelligent, working with tireless diligence throughout the summer months to produce food for the winter. The co-operative is centred around one member of the hive - the queen. The rest of the colony consists or workers who are sterile females and drones who are male.
The Queen bee
In every bee hive there is one Queen only at one time. If she dies the workers stop their work, refuse to eat and soon die unless another Queen is provided. Unlike the worker bees she does not have a pollen sac, she does not need one as she remains in the hive and does not collect pollen or make honey. Instead this is brought to her by the worker bees. She has little power in the hive despite the misleading title of Queen. Her only real task is to produce off-spring which she does in an amazing proliferation of up to 2,000 eggs per day, the number of eggs she produces is controlled by the workers in accordance with the amount of food with which she is fed for the duration of her life which is between two and five years. She eats royal jelly, secreted from the heads of worker bees, which is also fed to the larvae.
The worker bees
The thousands of bees in every colony called worker bees, who are all female, have a variety of tasks which change according to their age. These tasks include the building of the honeycomb, tending the larvae, keeping the hive clean, collecting food, pollen and nectar, and of course feeding the queen. Their first job which lasts for three days is to keep clean the cells in which the queen lays her eggs and also where the honey is made. Week old bees feed both the older larvae and the Queen, at two weeks of age the task of a worker bee is to make royal jelly for feeding younger worker larvae and queen larvae and also make wax for comb building. Her final job during the last few weeks of her life at about three weeks of age is to collect pollen and nectar for the hive. Bees live for only a few weeks if they are born in the spring but if they are not born until autumn they may continue to live throughout the winter. Only female bees however are present in the hive over winter.
The Drones
These are the male bees who mate with the Queen. Few in number, at least in comparison to the female worker bees, thy hatch in the hive and after spending a few days being fed by the worker bees, they fly away from the hive to look for a queen to mate. Seemingly they have but one purpose in life and that is to reproduce, to fertilise the queen, but it is only the fastest drones that catch the queens and successfully mate. Success in mating however has a negative consequence for the drone falls to the ground and dies after copulation. Prior to mating despite their lack of contribution whilst still in the colony the workers take great care of them, it takes five or six workers, working non stop, to feed just one of the 400 to 500 male bees in the hive. Despite the large numbers of drones in the hive only about ten are necessary for the queen to mate. Many predators await the drones as they emerge from the hive to copulate; the large numbers ensure that the queen is able to mate.
It is important to keep in mind that the above only occurs in nature; in situations where bees live out their natural lives as nature intended. Most of your honey however does not come from wild bees but is produced by large scale bee keeping in a factory farm situation. - Considering the above it may come as a surprise but the majority of bee species are not social and do not live in colonies or co-operate with one another to support a queen and do not produce honey. In fact about 90 percent of bee species are solitary. Solitary means that a single female after mating makes a number of cells in a nest constructed by herself, and lays an egg in each cell and has no workers to help provide food and look after the eggs. Each solitary bee gathers nectar and pollen as food for her own offspring, stocking each cell with a paste-like nectar and pollen mixture as food for the emerging larvae; she provides little or no further care after her eggs are laid. She usually dies before her young emerge. The males emerge first and are ready for mating when the females emerge. Solitary bees are important pollinators and have advanced pollen collecting structures on their bodies with which to collect the pollen; therefore a very small number of species are increasingly being cultivated for commercial pollination.
Each Solitary female bee builds her own nest in a variety of nooks and crannies including the holes in the ground, miner bees, holes or gaps in crumbling walls, masonry bees, or dead wood or the hollows of trees, leaf cutter bees. Some solitary bees build their nests using mud, chewed leaves and animal hairs in rocks or suitable plants. Species of solitary bees include, in addition to those already mentioned, sweat bees, wool-carding bees, white faced bees, and carpenter bees to name just a few. Solitary bees vary in both shape, size, markings and colouration. Some smaller species may resemble wasps and are often mistaken as such. Solitary bees are harmless creatures and are either stingless or rarely sting and than only in self defence if ever, and any sting would be mild.
Solitary however does not mean the bee lives out her existence entirely separated from others of her species. Some species of solitary bees are gregarious and build their nests in groups, these groups, which are sometimes vast in number, are called aggregations.
Solitary bees vary in colour from basic black to bright metallic green, blue or red. Some solitary bees superficially resemble wasps. - Parasitic bees
A parasitic species of solitary bee, sometimes called cuckoo bees, lay their eggs in the nest of other bees, the hatched larvae eat the pollen and honey intended for the larvae of the host. Some cuckoo bees, which look rather like bumble bees, lay their eggs in bumble bee nests and their young are cared for by the bumble bee workers who, rather like the cuckoo bird, seem not to notice the difference. - The huge number of species of bee vary in size from the tiniest, Trigona minima, a stingless bee whose workers are about 2.1 mm (5/64") long to the largest bee Megachile pluto, a leafcutter bee whose females can attain a length of 39 mm (1.5").
- Bee anatomy
Bees have a long proboscis (a complex "tongue") that enables them to obtain the nectar from flowers. They have antennae almost universally made up of 13 segments in males and 12 in females. Bees all have two pairs of wings, the hind pair being the smaller of the two; in a very few species, one sex has relatively short wings that make flight difficult or impossible, but none is wingless. Did you know that bees have five eyes! Three small eyes on the top of the head and two larger compound eyes on each side with thousands of lenses. Bees can see ultraviolet light but cannot see red. All bees are covered with hair although the amount varies. The colouration of bees is different from species to species some may bees may be black or brown, others are banded with white, yellow, or orange stripes. - Bees communicate
For example bees use a language of smells and dance to communicate with each other about the location of food. When bees have found a suitable source of nectar and pollen they return to the nest and perform what appears to be a most curious dance. The bee turns round and round in narrow circles, this informs other bees that the dancing bee knows where pollen and nectar can be obtained. The liveliness of the dance gives information concerning the amount, and scent on the dancing bee informs the other bees about the type of flower. This dance is called the round dance and is the simplest, performed when food is within 50–75 metres of the hive. Another dance which conveys more information is called the Waggle, this dance is performed when food is further than 75 metres from the hive, here bees dance in a figure eight connecting the eight with a straight line, the speed and number of turns per minute at which this dance is repeated provides information to other bees about the distance of suitable flowers. The direction is determined by the straight line through the figure eight which is made in relation to the position of the sun in the sky. - It may well surprise you but each droplet of nectar is swallowed and regurgitated fifty times! Bees do not create honey as such, the honey we eat is nectar that bees have repeatedly regurgitated and dehydrated. In theory just one once of honey will provide one bee with enough energy to fly round the world .
- The honeybee's wings stroke is 11,400 times per minute.
- If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would only have four years left to live.
Albert Einstein
In 2008 it was reported that nearly one in three of the UK's 240,000 honeybee hives did not survive the winter of 2007 and spring 2008.
Because bees belong to a special category of insects called pollinators and gather pollen or nectar from flowers they are of vital importance to any ecosystem and the effects of extinction in any country would be dire. Here in the UK for example there is concern about the threat of extinction of wild and also managed honey and bumble bees. One threat occurred in 1992 which brought honey bees to the brink of extinction and which was caused by the varroa mite, a nasty blood sucking creature that latches on to bees to suck their blood. Although eventually brought under control by means of chemical treatments there is of course concern that the mite may become resistant. Other threats to bees include, climate change, viral diseases and the change in agricultural practices in modern times including the use of pesticides and loss of habitat, for instance the loss of hedge rows and meadows, which has also effected all kinds of animals and plants. In particular insects of all species have been the targets of pesticides, the use of which have been on the increase despite the dire warnings concerning their use by Rachel Carson in 1962 in her book Silent Spring. This book is widely credited with helping launch the environmental movement. It has been estimated that if something is not done the honey bee in the UK will be extinct in just ten years, since this estimation was made by Lord Rooker in 2007 the situation has worsened. A similar situation occurs right across Europe .
This would not only of course be a sad loss to the diversity of the bee population but the loss would result in the extinction of many species of wild flowers and ultimately many species of animals, for instance bees pollinate plants such as blackberries, hawthorn and rowan which provide berries for birds through the winter, and an estimated loss of a third of our diet. A similar situation exists in the USA, were since 2006 vast numbers of honey bees are being wiped out by a mysterious condition known as Colony Collapse Disorder that leaves hives deserted. Over the last two winters the USA has lost a staggering seventy percent of its honey bee colonies. And don't forget it is not only the provider of honey, the honey bee, that is important but also the bumble bee, the pollinator of many of the foods which we eat. The situation concerning bumble bees is also a matter of serious concern in the USA were since the 1990s wild bumble bee numbers have dramatically been reduced, killed by parasites carried by bees imported into the USA from Europe to pollinate crops such as tomatoes and peppers
Below are a few examples of the plants pollinated by honey, bumble and solitary bees. Honey bees pollinate 90 of the flowering crops we rely on.
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Honey Bees
Kiwifruit Onion Celery cashew cauliflower Rapeseed Broccoli cauliflower cabbage Apple Brussels sprouts |
Bumble bees
Kiwifruit Celery cashew Apple |
Solitary bees
Kiwifruit Onion Rapeseed Broccoli cauliflower cabbage Apple Brussels sprouts |
For an in-depth article on the threatened extinction of bees and as a consequence other plants and animals including the animal called man please read the Times article Plight of the humble bee - Times Online
- Much needs to be done world wide to save bees from extinction. There is something we can all do even in a small way. Here in the UK you may be able to attract as many as ten bumble bees to your garden by providing the right kind of environment, planting the type of flowering plants these bees like, such as the native wildflowers and cottage garden plants listed in some of the website below. Also if at all possible provide bee friendly habitats and nesting sites in your garden.
More information and action you can take including lists of suitable flowering plants and how to provide nesting site please visit the websites below: (Continue scrolling for more bee facts and useful links)
- Despite the dire situation concerning bees, some large-scale beekeepers kill off their hives before winter, using cyanide gas. This seemingly counter productive and cruel act is done for financial considerations; it is apparently cheaper than housing, feeding and providing disease prevention over the winter. For these people bees are merely a means to an end, these creatures are of value only to make honey or rather money, in other words to make a profit. Even if bee keepers do not directly kill their bees intentionally, many will die at the hands of bee keepers that would not have otherwise done so without man's interference. The modern practice of bee keeping is a form of factory farming and like all factory farming is exploitative and cruel.
For more information concerning these issues please visit the websites below:
http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-food/animals-used-food-factsheets/honey-factory-farmed-bees/
Below is an extract from this very informative fact sheet. Please click the link above to read the complete fact sheet
Since “swarming” (the division of the hive upon the birth of a new queen) can cause a decline in honey production, beekeepers do what they can to prevent it, including clipping the wings of a new queen, killing and replacing an older queen after just one or two years, or confining a queen who is trying to begin a swarmSome farmers kill all the bees in the fall because it’s easier than winterizing the hives. One beekeeper admits that one of his friends “uses canisters of cyanide gas to exterminate 6,000 colonies of bees at the conclusion of the production season. It is the most economical way to run his operation.”(25) Each hive that is left to hibernate through the winter needs at least 50 pounds of honey to survive, and according to one entomologist, many bees succumb to improper care, starvation, weakness, and other problems during the winte