Bees and Honey Production

Bees share an ancestor with wasps and have been around for at least 100 million years. Unlike wasps bees are herbivores and have evolved side by side with flowering plants. Bees, ants and wasps share a number of similar physical characteristics and are all part of the order Hymenoptera.

Honey Bees have barbed stingers which are used in defense. However when the stinger is lodged in a mammal it gets stuck and ends up pulling out the bee's abdomen as she flies away, killing the bee. 

Like many other insects bees have compound eyes. Each tiny eye has its own lens and looks in a different direction. The bee combines this information and sees one image. Bees are able to see ultraviolet light which helps them locate flowers and nectar. 

Some nectar goes to the bees normal stomach where it is turned into energy for the bee. The rest is stored in the honey stomach where enzymes turn the nectar into honey. The bee then regurgitates the honey back at the hive.

This is where the bees venom is produced. The venom contains enzymes that destroy cells. 

Honey bees have a complex social structure. Honey bees operate as a collective, with all bees performing functions for the good of the whole hive. Female bees work together to collect food, defend the hive, produce honey and look after young. There are three roles within the hive; workers, drones and the queen.

The queen bee is the only reproducing member of the hive. She will mate with a drone and store the drone's sperm to use throughout her lifetime. She can lay up to 1,500 eggs per day during the warmer months.

All worker bees are female. When they are young they spend their time inside the hive looking after the queen and young. As they get older they are sent out to forage for the hive.

Drones are male bees. Queens can determine the sex of the bees when she lays the eggs and will produce far fewer drones compared to worker bees. Drones do not have stingers and their sole purpose is to mate with a queen.

When a queen gets old workers select a few larvae and feed them a special mixture called ‘royal jelly’ which produces functioning ovaries turning them into queens. Other larvae are fed a mixture of honey and pollen (called ‘bee bread’) 

Many species of flowering plants, including most of our fruits and vegetables rely on bees in order to reproduce. These plants have male and female parts and require pollen from the male flowers to land on the female flowers. Bees are the perfect pollinators, traveling from flower to flower. In return flowers entice and provide bees with sweet nectar. 

Flowers have developed a system of attracting pollinators like bees. Bees and other pollinators can see UV light and many plants will highlight where the nectar (and pollen) is located. These spots act like giant ‘food is here!’ advertisements. 

When a bee has located a flower with nectar it will use a straw like appendage called a proboscis to suck it out. Some nectar goes into the bee's normal stomach for energy and some nectar goes into the special honey stomach.

Bees also actively collect pollen. They store the pollen on their legs (called pollen baskets) and take it back to the hive to feed the hive’s young. It’s during this collection process that cross pollination of plants occurs. 

When a worker bee has located a good source of food they will perform a waggle dance to give the other bees directions. This dance is performed in the shape of a figure eight and is very accurate with communicating distance and direction.

Bees have a very short lifespan - around 40 days for a worker bee and those short days are used to ensure the future survival of the hive as a whole. This includes making honey to sustain the hive through the winter months when it is too cold for bees to go out and forage. 

Once a worker's honey stomach is full she comes back to the hive to deposit her collection of both nectar and pollen.

The worker bee regurgitates the nectar from her honey stomach into the mouth of a honey making bee. The honey making bee repeats the process to another honey making bee until the water content of the nectar is reduced from 70% to 20%.

Once the water content is removed the honey is placed within a honeycomb cell and sealed using beeswax to be used to feed the young of the hive and the workers during winter. 

When beekeepers collect honey they need to be careful to leave enough honey for the hive to survive over winter. Many beekeepers will also help feed their bees during the colder months.

Over 85% of plants used for human consumption rely on bees and other pollinators in order to reproduce. The earth’s dependence of bees extends beyond plants grown for food, scientists estimate over 250,000 plant species depend on bees to survive, including every plant in this scene. 

In 2007 the population of bees in the US plummeted. This pattern began to repeat around the world. Scientists caused the unknown disease ‘colony collapse disorder’. 

Recent research suggests that the bees die due to being exposed to fungicide. Fungicide is not supposed to affect insects but seems to leave bees susceptible to a fatal parasite when exposed.

Planting bee friendly gardens is an easy and effective way of helping the local bee population. Replacing lawns with flower beds and adding pots of flowers if space is limited can help support a bee colony.

Scientists are also trying to work out exactly what is causing colonies to die (an approximated 10 million hives have died in the past six years) and will be working closely with food producers to try and protect these essential insects.

The economic impact of pollinators (bees being the main pollinator in the world) is estimated to be $217 billion US a year. This is almost 10% of the total value of world agricultural food production. The good news is there are many things governments, farmers and even individuals can do to protect their local bee population. 

Governments around the world are starting to ban the use of pesticides that harm bees. Many farmers are also taking the initiative and are voluntarily moving away from these pesticides. 

Bee friendly gardens can be planted anywhere, from rooftop terraces, to window boxes, to large acreages. Providing pesticide free habitat for bees is vital to their survival.

Many species of bees do not live in hives. A bee hotel is easy to make and provides a home for solitary bees visiting the neighborhood.