Marietta Daisies Garden Club
- mariettadaisies
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
"What's the Buzz"
BEE HIVE
EDUCATIONAL NEWS
from the Hive
Laura Guilmette
A year-long
educational series.
1) Beekeeping is the second oldest profession.
People have been gathering honey from bees in the wild for at least 8,000-10,000 years.
Based on Egyptian art, beekeeping has likely been happening for at least 4,500 years.
Archeologists have found inscriptions in Egyptian tombs that depict pouring honey in jars and removing honey.
Evidence of pottery used as hives found in orderly rows dating from about 900 BCE was discovered at Rehov, a Bronze and Iron Age archaeological site in the Jordan Valley, Israel. In ancient Greece beekeeping was considered a highly valued industry and an ‘agricultural art’. Aspects of the lives of bees and beekeeping were discussed at length by Aristotle. Evidence has also been unearthed in China describing the art of beekeeping.
Bonus fact: Honey was found in King Tut’s tomb and it was still good!
2) The Queen is not the ruler of the hive.
Sorry, but her title is mostly ceremonial. She’s unique because she’s the largest female and the only bee capable of laying fertilized eggs which means the health of the queen can determine the health and survival of the hive. And, it’s true that she does receive special treatment from the worker bees who feed and clean her.
But she does not order the other worker bees around like you think a monarch might. The majority of the hive’s tasks are controlled by pheromones and other chemical signals that occur instinctively. When the queen is in the hive and doing her job she emits a pheromone that lets the bees know she’s present and accounted for which keeps the hive calm. However, if there’s a problem with her performance the worker bees will swiftly decide that it’s time to replace her.
3) Drones don’t survive the winter.
The male bee has a very important job and a very sealed fate. A drone’s purpose in life is to assure the survival of the species by mating with queen bees. And after performing this valiant and essential task, they die.
When the males are hanging out in the hive before flying out to mate with a queen a male bee doesn’t harvest nectar or pollen, doesn’t help feed eggs or larvae, doesn’t build anything, doesn’t clean, and doesn’t even have a stinger so can’t defend anything either.
They eat and take up space.
So, a drone who is still in the hive at the end of the season is going to meet a tragic fate in the fall.
The worker bees, who are programmed for efficiency, are not going to waste any extra space, honey or energy on drones. So, once the temperature starts to drop; out they go in the name of efficiency. The workers banish the remaining drones from the hive out into the elements never to survive.
4) Queens Can Quack and Toot.
Ok, it isn’t exactly quacking like a duck, but it’s kind of similar. When queens are ready to hatch out of their cells they begin making vibrations that resemble a sort of quacking sound. Then she chews her way out of the cell and her vibrations change and she starts making a ‘toot’ sound. Researchers believe that this ‘tooting’ is a sort of battle cry letting the rest of the bees know that she has hatched, she is the first, and that it would be best to not let the other queens hatch to avoid having a sting-battle to the death.
As we know, there can be only one queen!
If you’re curious about how these toot and quack vibrations sound, here is a link to some audio recordings and more details. https://www.snexplores.org/article/honeybee-queens-quack-toot-sounds-hatching-new-queen-duel
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