World Bee Day

A honey bee (or honeybee) is any bee that is a member of the genus Apis. They produce and store honey and make perennial, colonial nests from wax. There are only seven species of honey bees, with a total of 44 subspecies. Historically, six to eleven species have been recognized. Honey bees are only a small fraction of the roughly 20,000 known species of bees. Some other types of related bees produce and store honey, but only members of the genus Apis are true honey bees. The study of honey bees is known as ‘melittology.’

The first honey bees appear in the fossil record at the Eocene–Oligocene boundary (34 million years ago, in European deposits). This shows that the bees were present in Europe by that time. Few fossil deposits are known from South Asia, the suspected region of honey bee origin. Only one fossil species is known from the New World, a single 14-million-year-old specimen from Nevada.

Since 2007, abnormally high die-offs (30–70% of hives) of European honey bee colonies have occurred in North America. This has been dubbed “colony collapse disorder” (CCD) and was at first unexplained. It seems to be caused by a combination of factors rather than a single pathogen or poison, possibly including neonicotinoid pesticides or Israeli acute paralysis virus.

 A colony generally contains one queen bee, a fertile female; seasonally up to a few thousand drone bees, or fertile males; and tens of thousands of sterile female worker bees. Eggs are laid singly in a cell in a wax honeycomb, produced and shaped by the worker bees. The queen can choose to fertilize the egg she is laying, usually depending on which cell she is laying. Drones develop from unfertilized eggs while females (queens and worker bees) develop from fertilized eggs. Larvae are initially fed with royal jelly produced by worker bees, later switching to honey and pollen.

Young worker bees, sometimes called “nurse bees”, clean the hive and feed the larvae. When their royal jelly-producing glands begin to atrophy, they begin building comb cells. They progress to other within-colony tasks as they become older, such as receiving nectar and pollen from foragers, and guarding the hive. Later, a worker takes her first orientation flight and finally leaves the hive, typically spending the remainder of her life as a forager.

Worker bees cooperate to find food and use a pattern of “dancing” (known as the bee dance or waggle dance) to communicate information regarding resources with each other; this dance varies from species to species, but all living species of Apis exhibit some form of the behavior. If the resources are very close to the hive, they may also exhibit a less specific dance commonly known as the “round dance”. Honey bees also perform tremble dances, which recruit receiver bees to collect nectar from returning foragers.

Honey bees obtain all of their nutritional requirements from a diverse combination of pollen and nectar. Pollen is the only natural protein source for honey bees. Honey bees require water to maintain osmotic homeostasis, prepare liquid brood food, and cool the hive through evaporation. A colony’s water needs can generally be met by nectar foraging, as it has high water content. Occasionally, on hot days or when nectar is limited, foragers will collect water from streams or ponds to meet the needs of the hive.

Different species of honey bees are distinguished from all other bee species by the possession of small barbs on the stinger, but these barbs are found only in the worker bees. The stinger and associated venom sac of honey bees are also modified so as to pull free of the body once lodged (autotomy), and the stinger apparatus has its own musculature, which allows it to keep delivering venom once detached. The gland that produces the alarm pheromone is also associated with the stinger apparatus. The embedded stinger continues to emit additional alarm pheromone after it has torn loose; other defensive workers are thereby attracted to the sting site. The worker dies after the stinger becomes lodged and is subsequently torn loose from the bee’s abdomen.

Like us, bees are trichromatic. That means they have three photoreceptors within the eye and base their color combinations on those three colors. Humans base their color combinations on red, blue, and green, while bees base their colors on ultraviolet light, blue, and green. This is the reason why bees can’t see the color red. They don’t have a photoreceptor for it. They can, however, see reddish wavelengths, such as yellow and orange. They can also see blue-green, blue, violet, and “bee’s purple.” Bee’s purple is a combination of yellow and ultraviolet light. That’s why humans can’t see it. The most likely colors to attract bees, according to scientists, are purple, violet, and blue. Bees also have the ability to see color much faster than humans. Their color vision is the fastest in the animal world-five times faster than humans. So while we may have trouble distinguishing one flower in a group from another, bees don’t. They see each individual flower. Some flower petals appear to change color, depending on the angle. This is known as iridescence. It’s often in the UV spectrum, so we can’t see it. But bees can. They see these shiny petals and associate them with sugar. Thus, the flower becomes more attractive to the bee and gets pollinated.