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The World of Bees                          

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The World of Bees

 

So often, individuals who want to get started in beekeeping are impatient.  "Just do it" is a common expression in today's world.  You can start that way and learn by doing.  Just reinvent the wheel all over again.  However, we are offering you an opportunity to build a good foundation in understanding beekeeping so you will not have to reinvent what past beekeepers have already learned.   We are going to begin with the bees themselves.  

Bees

  When the word bee is used, one usually thinks of a yellow and black flying insect with a mighty sting.  Often mistaken for bees are yellow jackets which are not members of the bee kingdom at all but are members of the wasp family.  We might also point out that when one thinks of bees they are usually  thinking of honey bees but there are many types of bees.

What is a bee?

There are well over 10,000 different kinds of bees.  They fall into many categories such as:

 

Apis We are going to concentrate on the social bee Apis mellifera   however, all bees have some things in common and we will look at those characteristics.  At the same time we should be aware that the insect family is the largest in the animal world.  They have been arranged in orders (large groups of insects with similar characteristics).  One example is the butterfly order called Lepidoptera.  They also visit flowers to gather pollen and nectar and pollinate just as bees but differ in other respects.  Bees belong to the class Hymenoptera. 

Diptera

The word Hymenoptera has a descriptive meaning and is taken from the Greek words:  'hymen' (a membrane) and 'pteron' a wing.  Members of the Hymenoptera family include: bees, ants, wasp and some other insects loosely called flies.  However, flies in the true sense of the word are not members of the hymenoptera family.  They belong to a family called Diptera which are two winged insects.

As with all insects, the body of a bee is made up of three parts: the head, the thorax and the abdomen.   Members of the bee family  differ from other insects in that they have two sets of wings and thus cause some confusion when one looks at flies except under close inspection.  Many members of the bee family have a sting or the rudiments of a sting although some members do not.  It should be pointed out that only female members of this family have the ability to sting.  The sting is a female organ.  

Assignment:  Visit some flowering plants.  Examine the insects that visit.  You should find a large variety of insects.  You should find beetles, ants, flies, butterflies, bees and other insects as well.  It would be good to take some time to look at the world that exist in this little patch of beauty just outside our windows.

You will discover such a wide range of insects in size, shape, and color.   Many of these will be bees.   You will most likely need a magnifying glass to examine these insects closely.  So lets take a look at what distinguishes a bee from other insects you might find.

  You can not use color or size to distinguish between bees and other insects.   Some bees are quite large such as the common bumble bee and others quite small such as the orchard bee.   Most bees are solitary which means that a single female takes over the entire job of  building a nest, collecting food and feeding her young.  These bees are very valuable for  pollination.    Some like the orchard bee are active for only a short period of the year while others like the bumble bee establish an annual nest and others such as the honey bee develop into large colonies and spend the winter surviving on honey stores gathered thru the spring and summer.

Before we go  and look closely at the honey bee, there are several topics we need to consider before doing so.

Aggressiveness in bees

In nature, bees are seldom aggressive.   In fact you most likely have had bees around you many times and you were not aware of them.  They go about their business of gathering pollen, nectar and water.   The temperament of bees depends on a number of things:

The first three items can be grouped together.  All have a bearing on how the bees will behave under certain conditions.  Bees are not active outside the hive during periods of darkness, periods of cold weather, and periods of windy rainy weather.   Opening a hive during any of the conditions listed above will find all the bees present within the hive.  At night the bees will fly toward any visible light (red excluded).   A flashlight will certainly attract flying bees.  Using a red filter will stop the bees from flying toward the light.  One of the nasty things about opening a hive at night is bees do not fly but crawl.  They can find openings in clothing and make life miserable for the person who bothers them.   Bees are easily upset when examined in bad weather.  There ill temper seems to be magnified at these particular times.   Cold weather causes the bees to cluster and slow down.  Opening a hive in very cold weather will cause the bees to be disturbed but they are slow in searching out the disturbance.  And in very cold weather the bees can not fly for long -- maybe just a few seconds before they drop to the ground.

Genetics is a most interesting topic.  Aggressive behavior is a genetic trait.  Some bees are more aggressive than other bees.   An aggressive hive of  bees can become a gentle hive of  bees if just a queen from a gentle line of  bees are introduced into the hive.   As soon as the bees produced by the new queen replace the old bees the behavior changes drastically.  The results can be seen in approximately 40 days.   We need to point out that there is a distinct threat of very aggressive bees which have been  introduced into the Western Hemisphere in this last half century.  In the mid 1950's an African honey bee was introduced which has caused the Western bee world to sit up and take notice.  The Africanized honey bee is considered a threat to the safety and well being of  citizens where ever they are found.  They are now located in the border states with Mexico and if identified anywhere, they are destroyed as they should be.  This particular bee's sting is no more powerful than a regular honey bee's sting  but the fact that this bee attacks in large numbers is a problem for anyone living near it.   People have been hospitalized with 200+ stings from one incident and many have died from massive stings.

Vibrations, colors and  odors can be grouped as well.   Honey bees do not have ears and thus do not hear sound.  They can feel vibrations in the air however.   The senses of  bees are acute.   Anyone trying to mow grass around a bee hive can testify to the reaction of  bees to vibration from the lawn mower.  And in regard to smell, the sense of smell is probably better than in  humans.   Bees react to various hair sprays, perfumes, and other smells thus the warning in many bee books about not wearing or putting on hair sprays and perfume.    Honey bees do react to something called the alarm pheromone and if you happen to be wearing anything that is similar, the bees will be attracted to it.  Bees will also react to certain colors while other colors do not seem to excite them.  Black is a common target as is red.    Bees seem to be attracted to small areas of black or what looks black to them.   Black socks are a good target for them.  It may be that over the years the enemies of bees have created this reaction to human breath and dark colors.  Enemies of bees do include skunks, bears, mice, and other mammals.    Have you noticed how bees seem to fly around the head.   It could be that they are attracted by the dark color of our hair and the carbon dioxide we exhale.   

The enemy of  bees are many and they do cause the bees to become aggressive.   For example, a hive of bees being visited nightly by a skunk will exhibit aggressive behavior during the day.   The bees are quick to react to any disturbance and this reaction has nothing at all to do with any of the other conditions which are listed.    

 

All of this takes us to the final two items.  How do we react to bees?  How do you work with them?    As explained above, we know that quick herky jerky movement and clumsy bumping of the hive can cause the bees to react in an aggressive way. I often have fun telling visitors to my bee yards that my bees know me.  It is not true but some tend to believe me because as soon as a bee flies near, they begin to swat at it and the bees seem to just ignore me.   The key to working with bees is to work in slow deliberate movements without pinching and crushing bees as frames are examined in the hive.  A little smoke will encourage the bees to load up on honey and turn the other way and avoid me completely. One should always remember that there are never two hives of  bees exactly the same and their behavior  is variable  within a race and variable from race to race.  

Intelligence of Bees

Much thought has gone into the study of the intelligence of bees.   Karl Von Frisch observed the behavior of returning honey bees to the hive and developed many experiments to reveal what he called their dance language.   He was able to show that the dance of returning bees to the hive influenced foraging bees to seek out the location of the sugar reward he was giving to them.

A recent PBS television program compared the intelligence of the top 10 animals in the world.   The honey bee beat out dogs for the ninth spot in their list.   Believe it or not, the Dog was listed as number 10.  Of course the primates were at the top of the list.

Too many of us are willing to accept the honey bee in human terms.  Notice how often the honey bee is referred to in popular slogans and literature.   "Busy as a bee" for example.   I can remember a course in psychology in college when the topic of animal intelligence came up.  The question was, "Can a squirrel remember where it buried it nuts in order to survive the winter?"   After long discussion, we had two groups -- one group that thought the squirrel certainly would starve unless its brain could remember exactly where it buried the nuts and another group that was certain that the squirrel was  a slave to its environment and found the nuts by instinct and a condition of smell.   Unless we were squirrels and could think in human terms, we most likely will never know what the true answer is and the same applies to bees.  They do not go to school in human terms and knowledge is not passed from one generation to another.   It is entirely possible to hatch out young bees in a comb of brood in an incubator and once enough of them have emerged, give them a queen, and they behave just like bees from any other hive of bees.  Mankind has found a way to manage bees, not a way to tell them what to do.  Bees will always do what bees do.  Thus it is up to us to learn what bees do!

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