A quick note for those who have inquired--I am currently on a business trip and will begin posting the remaining parts of my short story, The Hunt, on Friday and continue daily until it is all posted.
The following is a small excerpt from my previously published book, The Beekeeper's Guide.
The Beautiful Honeybee
The humble honeybee has been providing food for humans for several thousand years. Humans have long sought out this tasty source of energy packed with vitamins and minerals. It not only provides basic calories, but also delivers much needed health benefits.
The honeybee lives in a hive. The hive structure is simple, yet breathtaking in its beauty. A wild hive can nest inside a tree, a cave, in a deep dark crevice or even in the attics or sides of buildings. Bees prefer to make their homes in protected areas so they are safe from bad weather and predators. A wild beehive consists of several lobes of honeycomb that provide a secure and sanitary area for the bees to raise their young and store their food. Sounds kind of like people behavior to me. Honeycomb is built of many tiny hexagonal cells that function as storage spaces for honey and pollen. The honeycomb also serves as birthing chambers for the bee larvae. The size of the individual cells will vary depending upon the bees and their needs. We will talk a bit more about that later.
Who is in charge? A hive of bees seems to function as a single individual yet contains upwards of 60,000 bees. Some wild hives will even reach mammoth proportions of double or triple that depending on the location and how comfortable they feel with their surroundings. If there is space, safety, food and water, the colony can grow fairly large. An average beehive kept by a beekeeper will have between 50,000 and 80,000 bees. All the bees in the colony take their cues from the queen. A strong colony with a healthy queen is called a queenright colony.
How do all this little creatures know what to do and when to do it? That question is one of the great mysteries of nature. Although scientists aren’t exactly sure how all the bees are able to work together to create and maintain their home, they do know that most of the cues are given by the queen. The queen bee produces several different pheromones which direct the worker bees as to what activities need to be done. The pheromones tell the workers to build wax, care for brood, forage and store supplies. They also alert the workers that the queen is ailing and might need to be replaced.
The queen is not the only one giving off clues. The worker bees also produce pheromones that create just the situation most people have the greatest fear of—a bee attack. The brood (bee larvae and pupae) even give off pheromones that tell the workers how old they are and what they need for food. It seems that pheromones help the bees manage each other, but most scientists and beekeepers agree that the queen bee is the most important bee in the hive. Although she can be usurped at any time if the colony decides she is weak or ailing, without a queen, the colony will dwindle and die off.
The honeybee definitely communicates within the hive. As we have already seen, pheromones are one major form of communication between the various bees. The pheromones give clues to the surrounding bees as to what needs to be done and how urgently it needs to get done. But it seems the honey bee also communicates through dance. When foraging worker bees return to the hive, they dance on the honeycomb. The style of dance tells the other bees how far away the food is and in what direction it lies. It appears that the frequency of repetition as well as the direction of the dance gives clues to the surrounding sisters that allow them to find the same food sources. As they dance, the bees take slight pauses to give their sisters a taste of the food source. Just like at a big box store on a weekend day where they are handing out food samples to tempt you into buying their delicious food, if the worker bees enjoy their sample enough, they may just take a flight out to collect more of the same.
The bee body is a classic insect structure consisting of a head, a thorax, and an abdomen. In a bit more detail we find the following things on a bee’s body.
The head is the smallest of the three parts. On the head are two compound eyes, two antennae, and two mandibles which are sometimes referred to as mouthparts.
The thorax of the bee is the next smallest body section. Attached to it are the wings and the legs. Each wing consists of a front and back wing which are attached to each other on their respective sides. The front and back wings beat in tandem. The forelegs come out from the front of the thorax, and are articulated—which means they are jointed. They are used to clean the bee’s eyes as well as the antennae. The middle legs sit in the middle of the thorax and are also articulated. They clean the thorax and the wings. The hind legs are the most specialized of the leg sets. These legs have amazing pollen baskets which collect the pollen and bring it back to the hive. If you watch your honey bees as they land in your hive, you can see the pollen baskets stuffed full of bright pollens. I love to watch for all the different colors of pollens as they come in for a landing. The pollen baskets are actually hollows in the hind leg that are surrounded by long curved hairs.
The abdomen of the bee is the largest part of the bee body and contains all the vital organs. It also carries the sting. This retractable stinger is used to inject venom from the venom sac into poor, unsuspecting victims. Just kidding—the honey bee is actually very mild and will only sting when backed into a figurative corner. In my time as a beekeeper, wearing the correct clothing, I rarely get stung. In the past three years I have only been stung once.
My book, The Beekeeper's Guide, is available for purchase on Amazon right here.
© 2015, Stone Golem Publishing, All rights reserved--no part of this may be used without express written consent.
**The picture is one of my bees on a tree blossom in my yard.
