Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Kingdom of Bees
Do you remember that song about bees that we used to sing when we were little kids? I could still remember my teacher asking us to be as hard-working as the bees do, just as the lyrics written in the song. However, there was preciously a news about three siblings losing their lives after being stung by group of hornets! Are bees really that fearful? Would our children start to dislike bees since then? Nevertheless, to win over something, we must understand things about it. Let’s have a trip to the bee’s world today.
A beehive is like a bee’s kingdom. The kingdom is ruled by a Queen Bee, whereas the rest of the citizens are mostly male.
In the bee’s kingdom, they live in a society that follows the system of a pyramidal order where the only Queen will be the top most superior one. She’s the only female bee to have a fully developed reproduction system, hence, rendering her to be the one to reproduce. Other than that, the Queen Bee has a mandibular gland that secretes pheromone (1). The labour bees would distribute this pheromone throughout the beehive to stabilize every bee’s emotion and psychological state. It helps in reproducing and maintaining a production as high as 3,000 eggs. It takes the Queen 16 days to mature from being an egg. 3 days being as an egg, 5.5 days being a larva and 7.5 days being a pupa. When its wings are fully developed, it can start flying in just 3-5 days. When the reproduction organs are developed in 4-7 days, it begins mating for about 1-3 times. Eggs will be laid in 3-4 days after that. Other than having a natural swarm (2) or some of the abnormal cases, the Queen would never leave the beehive. It has a lifespan of 4-5 years, or even 8 years! It’s reproduction progress will decrease as time goes by.
The worker bees on the other hand, are female bees with an under developed reproduction system. They are the ones to do everything except laying eggs. After a larva hatches, it begins cleaning the beehive 3 days later. From the 3rd to 13th day, they’ll begin to feed the Queen. When their wings are developed 12-18 days later, they’ll become engineers and builders of the kingdom. Some of them would become bodyguards to protect the kingdom after the 15th day. After the 21st day, the worker bees would start to source for honey from the flowers. In some cases, when required, they’ll start the progress earlier at the age of 6 or 7 days. As they get older, they’ll stay in the beehive to construct little homes for the eggs and larvae.
When the Queen is absent, the worker bees would lay unfertilized (3) eggs with the help of pheromone to keep the reproduction rate progressing. These eggs will soon hatch with bunch of male bees. A worker bee’s lifespan during collection period is about 1-2 months and 3-5 months during Winter.
Lastly, male bees are developed from unfertilized eggs. The only task for them is to mate with the Queen. It takes 24 days to grow into a larva and 7 days to be able to fly after developing their wings. During the 8th to 14th day, their reproduction organs would be developed and the mating process would then begin. The mating process reached its peak when Spring ends. After mating, a male bee would lose its life as their stomach cracks. It had a lifespan of 4-5 months.
Let’s discover more about how they interact and their culture.
Dance
It’s funny that bees dance to communicate about food or water. When a worker bee found food and brought it back to the beehive, it’ll dance around to inform the rest of the bees about the source of the food.
Sound
The bees are always creating sound in a group day and night by their wings.
They could communicate with pheromone of the buzzing of their wings to alert the group for a hospitality or hostility situation. This also helps to guide the group of the way they fly.
The structure of a beehive
The beehive can be separated into two parts, a part having large rooms and another one having the small rooms. The small rooms are places where a worker bee hatches from its egg and grow as a larva. On the other hand, the larger rooms which are located at the bottom are dedicated to the male bees. Both the large and small rooms can be used to store honey and water. The third room, which is the largest and longest of them all is the room of the Queen, also known as the Queen Cell.
There could be several Queen Cells in a beehive. When the first Queen bee developed its wings, it will kill the rest of the virgin Queens and destroy their Queen Cells. On the other hand, if there are two who got their wings at the same time, they’ll put up a war until one of them falls.
Temperature Control in the Beehive
During a hot season, worker bees would set out and source for water. When they’ve found it, they’ll begin splashing the water onto the beehive. At the same time, the rest of the worker bees would flap their wings as if they’re an electrical fan to circulate the air throughout the beehive.
Whereas if the weather gets cold, the worker bees would have a group hug and gather up their heat. Similarly, they’d flap their wings together to distribute the heat.
A Flying Wedding
When a Queen gets older, a new generation of little Queens and male bees will be born. Then, a ceremony would be held. But before that, the old Queen has to leave the beehive with a group of worker bees. As they reached to a tree branch, the worker bees would surround the Queen in a circle.
When the old Queen is gone, little Queen bees will be born. They will put up a fight with each other until the last survivor gets the chance to be the next Queen. After that, the new Queen would fly up high as the male bee follows behind her. They would attempt to mate in the air, yet the male bee would die the same way after mating. However, the new Queen would then return to her cell.
1. When the pollen are great in supply, one third of the worker bees would head out for it whereas the rest of them would stay in. It takes them about 27-45 minutes to gather the pollens from the flowers. However, they only rest themselves for about 4 minutes for each travel.
2. The worker bees can gather pollens for at most 24 times a day. They’d gather 70-80 milligram of pollen.
3. There are two different changes during the process of producing honey. Firstly, sucrose will be broken down into glucose and fructose. After that, the water concentration would also be reduced to as low as 20% for a longer storage period. After these processes, the honey will be put into the cells for further refining.
4. When the honey’s refined, the worker bees would seal them up with a layer of beeswax.
5. The time taken for the production of honey may vary due to the performance of the bees, weather, and type of plants. The average time taken would be 5-7 days.
6. When a bee discovers pollen, it’ll land on the stamen (4) of a flower and wet its mouth to let the pollen get attached onto it.
7. A bee uses three pair of its legs to get the pollen. Firstly, it passes the pollen to the middle legs from the front ones. With the middle legs, it rubs the pollen on its tummy such that the hind legs could get them and put them into the pollen comb (also known as pollen basket, located on the hind legs).
8. Usually they’d visit about 84 pear flowers or 100 dandelions for a trip. It takes 6-10 minutes to collect them, or in some cases, reaches to 187 minutes!
9. They’d have about 6-8 trips each day or the most, 10 trips for each bee. The weight of pollen they could gather is about 12-29 milligram.
Ways to prevent from being attacked by bees
Bees do not usually harm anyone. A bee would only attack someone when it feels like its life is being threatened. Sometimes, we might have mistakenly entered their territory to have given them a hostility situation. Please remember to look around and check if there’s any beehive in the garden. When you see some bees gathering pollen of the flowers, chances are there might be one nearby.
Here are some of the things we should be alert of:
1. Do not get too close to the worker bees while they’re working. You might disturb them.
2. If you discovered a beehive in your house or school, please contact the fire fighting department. Please be warned not to disturb the beehive on your own.
3. When you’re out to a garden, please prevent from putting on perfume. This might misled the bees as they might just think of you as a flower!
4. Please use the dedicated path for hiking and do not run around carelessly. Some of the beehives could be constructed below some rotten woods or even on the floor. You might mistakenly stepped on one if you do so.
5. When you see a single hornet flying around you, it probably means that you’ve entered their territory. Please do not chase it away or attack it or it may call upon the rest of the hornets to attack. Escape from that place as soon as possible.
6. If you’re stung by a bee, please get yourself to a clinic or a hospital for a shot. The bee’s venom could stay in the body for 2-4 days. Give prior attention to any responses from your body within this period. You can put some ice under the wound to relief the swell.
(1) Pheromone - a chemical substance secreted by an animal that functions to influence the psychology and behaviour of other members of the same species
(2) Swarm – a group of honeybees that flew off the beehive along with a Queen to start another colony
(3) Unfertilized – not being fused with a male gamete (5)
(4) Stamen – the pollen-bearing organ of a flower
(5) Gamete – a mature sexual reproductive cell
[END]
Words for the children:
I believe we’re pretty familiar with the bees now after this trip to their world. Actually, bees aren’t our enemy, but our friends. They’ve been a great help for the farmers as they distribute the pollens to other flowers, making the plants to grow fruit and crops.
Hence, we shall not disturb them or make fun of them while we see them around. As a human being, our happy and comfortable lives very much depend on the gift of nature. Thus, we must learn to cherish and protect the things around us, like bees. Human beings are the ones with knowledge and wisdom to make decisions and determine on situations. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi once said “Human beings are the ones who are able to carry out self-management. Self-management refers to the ability of amending mistakes and wrong doings when it happens. This is because most of the mistakes are done by ourselves.” As a good child, we must never let our parents worry about us. We’re not the only ones to feel the pain if we got hurt, but our beloved parents as well.
As a child who’s filial towards our parents, we must think of them and their feeling before doing something. Plus, Ikeda Sensei had always encouraged us “The light of humanity originates from actions that benefit others. People are contributing themselves for the sake of their friends, and other people. Only then we’re truly a human.”
Shared by,
Heroism & Primitive.
Translated by,
Happy.
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