There is Never Unemployment in a Bee Hive

I am in the midst of reading the most captivating natural history book I have ever read, The Buzz About Bees by Jurgen Tautz. Everything, and I mean everything you would want to know about bees is packed in this color plate-filled book. I thought I appreciated and loved bees before, but there is so much to learn and understand about them I will have to read this gem over and over to remember it all. To think how little we know about our fellow creatures is humbling.

I thought I would share a few of the fascinating bee facts presented in this book, to tantalize you to go order your own copy. Remember, about 95% of bees in a hive are female, only 5% are drones (males).

1.  Bees orient themselves using the sun and ultraviolet light.

2.  Many foraging bees sleep at night, sometimes outside of the hive where it is more quiet and peaceful.

3.  Scout bees travel out of the hive to find good flowers, and let the other bees in the hive know the location by performing "waggle" and "circle" dances, directing them to the source of their excitement. Their dance changes throughout the day, based on the position of the sun, even though the directions are to the same patch of flowers.

4.  Bees navigate using the color green.

5.  Bees measure the dimensions of their hive by forming "chains' of bees, stretched out to the proper distance.

6.  There is never unemployment in a bee hive. Jobs include queen (very exclusive, only one per hive), queen attendants, nurse bees, housekeepers, undertakers, water carriers, pollen foragers, nectar foragers, guards, comb construction, and nectar transporters. The drones only job is to mate with a queen on a mating flight (a fatal experience to the male). At the end of mating season, the drones are kicked out of the hive and die.

7.  In the life of a bee, she will hold every job but queen at some point, although in a queenless hive some worker bees may lay unfertile eggs that turn into drones.

8.  Bees swarm to create new colonies, how do they get the message across to thousands of bees and the queen that it is time to bust loose and find a new pad? They beep. Scouts will go back and forth between the newly selected location and the hive, and do the bee dance. At some point all dancing in the hive stops, and the dancers make their way to the center of the hive, "beeping" as they go. This beeping causes the beeped bees to raise their body temperatures. Soon, almost half the hive has been beeped, and when the temperature reaches 89.6 degrees F, the bees explode out of the hive and create the familiar swarm, roaring across the sky. Wow.

So now are you as excited as I am about bees? I am ready to start reading a new book, "Bee Democracy". Already I am making comparisons between bee society and human society. Bees have many gifts to offer us humans, far beyond their delicious honey. Can we listen?