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?

Detasseling - A Midwestern Rite of Passage

Driving through the countryside today, I watched as the Imperial Crop Walkers made their way through the fields detasseling corn. Straight out of Star Wars, these large mechanical monstrosities have giant tires that lift the guts of the beast above the corn plants, allowing their jaws of death to rip the tassels from the poor lowly corn plants below.

According to Wikipedia, detasseling corn is removing the pollen-producing flowers, the tassel, from the tops of corn plants and placing them on the ground. It is a form of pollination control employed to cross-breed, or hybridize, two varieties of corn. Basically, it prevents a corn plant from self-pollinating.

Back when I was a kid, we did this. By we I mean the teen workforce in our village. It was hot dirty work I was told (I opted for a trailer factory job), and one that was not on the top 10 list of best places to work (why I opted for a trailer factory job). But I know that the kids who went to the fields grew up knowing what a hard day's work was all about. It was a rite of passage. But then came the Crop Walkers.

Developed in the 1970's (when I was a teenager), the machines replaced the teens. Apparently, it was becoming more difficult to convince the restless youth to spend their summers in the corn fields, so with a dwindling teen work force, the Crop Walkers were created. Necessity is the mother of invention so they say.

The Imperial Crop Walkers are not able to detassel all the corn so there are still human beings required to finish the job. Some are teens, but nowadays most are migrant workers.

I have a hunch that the demise of the teen detasseling rite of passage is responsible for an increase in rabble- rousing among the younger sector of our population. No teen could do anything but eat and sleep after a long day in the field. So I vote for calling in Luke Skywalker, Princess Leah, Chewy, and Hans Solo and have them blast the Imperial Crop Walkers to smithereens. Let the young folks build some character and muscles out in the fields again. Then, in 20 or 30 years when they are the leaders of this land, they will remember what a hard day's work is all about.