Spring
is in full swing in the Northern Hemisphere, so in honor of all things
blooming, I decided to bring a special page from my web site over here
to the Emblazoners. Most Tweens I know have a healthy curiosity about
the world and all things in it. One creature that should not disappoint
in amazing curious minds is the Honey Bee. I’ve spent over a decade
working with these fascinating creatures and am still learning about
them. Here’s a bit of Bee Trivia that might surprise you as much as it
did me:
* Lotta bees
There can be up to 80,000 honey bees in a single hive during the
summer months. A queen can lay upwards of 250,000 eggs per year,
possibly more than a million during her lifetime.
* Girl power
95% of honey bees are female. One is the queen and the rest of the
girls are worker bees. These workers do all the work in the hive:
cleaning, feeding and grooming the queen, tending to the larvae,
guarding the hive, foraging for nectar and pollen, making honey and
beeswax, heating and cooling the hive, basically everything other than
laying eggs and fertilizing the queen.
* What’s all that buzzing?
Honey bees have 4 sets of wings that move at a rate of 11,400 strokes
per minute, causing their buzz sound. They also use their wings to fan
and cool the hive in the summer.
* They mind their beeswax
Honey bees have special glands in their stomach that secrete wax.
They take the wax and chew it up to shape into honeycomb–hexagonal wax
cells used to house larvae and to store honey and pollen.
* I have a mother, but no father. Say what?
Male honey bees, or drones, are born from unfertilized eggs. So, they
have a mother, but no father. A drone’s only job is to mate with a
queen, and once he does, he dies. Before that time, he wanders around
the hive eating lots of food and doing nothing much else. They are quite
large, with big eyes, powerful wings, and tiny mouths. And they do not
have a stinger, so are virtually harmless.
* Let’s boogy
Honey bees use several types of dances to communicate with each
other. A Round Dance tells of a new source of nectar less than 100
meters from hive, a Wag-Tail Dance tells of nectar more than 100 meters
from hive, an Alarm Dance warns that poisonous food has arrived in the
hive, and a Cleaning Dance is a request to be cleaned or groomed (sort
of like the honey bee’s version of going to a spa).
* Timeless food
Honey is the only food humans eat produced by an insect. Honey bees
visit 2 million flowers and travel 55,000 miles to make 1 pound of
honey. Each worker bee can make in her lifetime 1/12 of a teaspoon of
honey. So, when you put a teaspoon of this liquid gold into your tea,
you are eating the labors of 12 bees. Honey contains vitamins, minerals,
and live enzymes, and it never goes bad. In fact, an archaeologist
found a 3,300 year old jar of honey in an Egyptian tomb that was still
edible.
* All the better to see you with
Honey bees have 5 eyes: 2 compound and 3 simple eyes. They have hair
on their eyes and no pupils. They see one notch right of the color
spectrum, meaning they see ultraviolet, but not red. Their compound eyes
are best at detecting motion, so they will visit wind-blown flowers
more readily than still ones. Almond trees have nectar that fluoresces
under ultraviolet light to help bees know which flowers have food (sort
of like a restaurant advertising for business).
* A plea for the honey bee
Honey bees are vital to our food production. Every third mouthful of
food is produced by bees pollinating crops; 80% of our food relies on
pollination somewhere down the line. We humans should do everything we
can to keep these wondrous creatures alive and healthy. Setting up a
hobby hive in your garden, eliminating the use of pesticides on
flowering plants and trees, and planting nectar-filled flowers will
contribute to a healthy population of honey bees and other important
pollinators.
Christina Mercer is
an award-winning author of fiction for children and young
adults. She enjoys life in the foothills of Northern California with her
husband and sons, a pack of large dogs, and about 100,000 honeybees.
For more about her and her writing, visit www.christinamercer.com
CURRENT PROMO PRICE 99 CENTS! BUY LINKS:
No comments :
Post a Comment