Bees - May 3, 2012

Bees are yellow and black, they make a buzzing sound when they fly, they make honey, they sting, they have a bee hive, and they can trigger life threatening allergic reactions for some people. That pretty much ends the list of the common conceptions of bees, which, therefore is all the knowledge I had. Many of these knowledge scared me a little; whenever I see a flying object in yellow and black, whenever I hear a buzzing noise, or whenever I feel a sting I think it may be a bee and sweat. However, knowing a lot more about bees made me like them a little more, thanks to the great knowledge provided by Evan Sugden.

Evan Sugden is a part time professor at the University of Washington (I believe!) and he is an astounding expert of insects. He occasionally teaches an entomology class at the University, while he is also a beekeeper at the beehive at UW farm.

First off, Evan described the very basic distinction between wasps and bees is that wasps are predators that feed on insects and arthropods, while bees feed on plants. Wasps are relatively larger and more aggressive - the guys you necessarily do not want to mess around. The wasps would not be afraid to sting you. On the contrary, bees are gentle; often times they would not attack you unless you aggressively molest them. This is especially true when bees are feeding on flower nectar since they become so concentrated on collecting the precious food source that they are not easily bothered by whatever happens in the surroundings.

Evan also introduced that all bees are types of wasps. I found this quite surprising as somehow I imagined the order of evolution to be the other way around. I reasoned that pretty much all the traits of wasps: larger bodies, aggressive behaviors, louder buzzing, and brighter yellow and red colors evolved from bees in order to induce fear to other species. However, as mentioned before, bees evolved from wasps for a good reason. The reason lies in the characteristic that separates bees from wasps, which is that bees feed on flowers. Back in time, it made sense for certain wasps to specialize on collecting food from plants, taking advantage of plants' immobility and less competition with other wasps. The plants welcomed bees as great pollinators. As a result of the mutalism formed one of the most important coevolutions in the natural world between plants and bees. Apparently, coevolution led bees to develop furry hairs on their bodies to capture more nectar and pollen.

Within bee species, there are what are called social bees and solitary bees. The names are pretty self-explanatory; social bees include honeybees and bumblebees that hive by packs. Each hive has a queen bee that lays all the eggs for the hive at an incredible rate; two or three per day. What is more interesting is that queen bee only has a week or two of a time span to mate with males from other hives. This period is essential since queen bees use the sperm gained during this period to give birth for the rest of the year.

We tend to associate bees with honey, but it is only the honeybee that produces honey. Bumblebees do as well but less efficiently. Honeybee is especially vulnerable against cold, so they make honey to generate heat so that their nest remains warm. It is the process of making honey that generates heat, not the honey itself. Honey comes from nectar, which then, to my astonishment, bees fan the water to evaporation with their wings until only the sugar remains. Bees can flap their wings about 230 times per second (obviously depends on the species and individuals of bees) and it is this ultra fast wing movement that evaporates the nectar into honey (and it is also this wing movement that causes the buzzing sound). Honeybees are not that big in size compared to other bees and much less so than humans, so one can only imagine that fanning water to evaporation is a huge labor. Translate their worth of labor to human accounts; it would be like being told to evaporate a sugar water in a frying pan with a traditional fan. I simply think honeybees' production of honey is unbelievable.

By the way, bees sleep as well. They sleep in and out of their hives depending on age, but some bees are found sleeping on flowers.

For more interesting bee facts, check UW bees on google blogger.

Species list

genus Bombus - bumblebee
genus Apis - honeybee
suborder Apocrita - wasps

Posted on May 7, 2012 07:30 AM by bluehoneysugar