The Workings of Bees

Hello readers! I think we've all heard about how bees are starting to decrease. Recently, I read an article on BBC News, about the bumblebee being infected with honeybee diseases, where its pathogens are capable of infecting adult bumblebees. Bees haven't had good luck over the years as during the last few decades, many species have suffered deep declines, for instance, the speicies Bombus cullumanus bumblebee have gone extinct. This may be due to the destruction of their habitats, particularly wildflower meadows, but also due to diseases. While I am one to usually run away from bees, especially the alarming huge bumblebees, and was first stung by a bumblebee at three years old, it is saddening to hear about their decline. And what of the honey? Delicious honey...

Moving on, this post is therefore a dedication to bees!

 

Facts about the bumblebee:

They live in small nests and they do not swarm. The queen will spend her entire life in the nest and will start the nest when she is ready to lay eggs. She produces worker bees first to collect pollen

Bees drink nectar from flowers and juices from fruit. Bees only produce enough honey to feed the younger bumblebees which is stored in honey pots

Bees are about three quarters of an inch in length, have four wings, a stinger at the end of their abdomen and usually yellow and black striped. They appear to be furry compared to other bees, they are bigger than a honey bee but much less aggressive and will only attack when they feel threatened

Each spring, the queen bee builds a nest out a wax. She already has eggs when she builds the nest. She will first deposit an egg in each cell and pollen for food, and then seals up the cells. Bumblebees hatch, they go through the larva and pupa stages, and develop into adult worker bees, and they cut their way out of the wax cell. This process takes about 21 days.

The flight of the bumblebee has proven to be scientifically astounding when discovered that the insect can fly high enough to pass Mount Everest. The Chinese bumblebee is still capable of flight when the air pressure falls to a level equivalent to an altitude of 9,000 metres. This air pressure would suffocate most other animals. They continue to fly by altering the angle of their wings to increase their amplitude as they fly back and forth. 

Bumblebee Life Cycle:

The queen emerges in spring, and searches for a suitable nest site where in this space, she builds a ball of moss, hair, or grass, with a single entrance. Once this is constructed, the queen prepares for her offspring.

She builds a wax honey pot, and provisions it with nectar and pollen. She then collects pollen and forms it into a mound on the floor of her nest. It is only after that, she beings to lays eggs in the pollen, and coats it with wax secreted from her body.

The queen uses the warmth of her body to incubate her eggs by sitting on the pollen mound. For nourishment, she consumes honey from her wax pot, which is positioned within her reach. In four days, the eggs hatch.

The bumblebee queen will forage pollen and feed her offspring until they pupate. Only when this first brood emerges as bumblebee adults can she quit the daily tasks of foraging and housekeeping.

For the remainder of the year, the queen concentrates her efforts on laying eggs. Workers help incubate her eggs, and the colony swells in number. At the end of summer, she begins laying some unfertilized eggs, which become males. The bumblebee queen allows some of her female offspring to become new, fertile queens. With new queens ready to continue the genetic line, the bumblebee queen dies, her work complete.

With the approach of winter approaches, new queens and males mate and the males die soon after mating. New generations of bumblebee queens seek shelter for the winter, and wait until the following spring to begin new colonies.

Thanks for reading!