Why Do Bees Buzz?: Fascinating Answers to Questions about Bees

1. Bee Basics

ONE Bee Basics Question 1: What are bees? Answer: Bees are invertebrate animals that grow through four different life stages—egg, larva, pupa, and adult—similar to the seemingly friendlier insects, the butterflies. However, unlike butterflies, which abandon their eggs once they are laid, bees provide their young a safe place to hatch and grow. All juvenile bees develop within the protected confines of an enclosed nest that is built by a female bee or by other females in the family. In some social species, the bee babies, or larvae, are fed on demand by their sisters. In other bee species, the larvae are enclosed within a small chamber after food has been deposited inside it. While often confused with wasps, their more aggressive, meat-eating cousins, bees almost always collect and feed on nectar and pollen from plants. These food resources may be consumed directly, stored within the nest, or made into provisions for later generations. Bees and wasps do share a common ancestry, as evidenced by their superficially similar bodies; insects in each group have a “wasp waist”—the narrow area between the thorax (middle body-part) and the abdomen (end body-part). Both types of insects have many hairs on their bodies, but the hairs on bees are fluffy or branched; the hairs on wasps are typically straight and somewhat shiny. Both also have two sets of wings that fold back on top of one another when not in use and hook together during flight, and many species have similar coloration on their bodies R5192.indb 1 R5192.indb 1 11/30/09 3:02:16 PM 11/30/09 3:02:16 PM 2 WHY DO BEES BUZZ? Bees and social wasps, like hornets and yellow jackets, evolved from a common, solitary wasp ancestor that was dependent on other insects as a protein source for its developing larvae. Bees now rely only on pollen as a source of protein for their young. Once bees metamorphose into adults, they do not grow, and adult bees only require fuel for movement and flight. Nectar, from the Latin “drink of the gods,” is the bees’ sugar-rich source of energy, so flowers provide everything the bees need. Other animals, like hummingbirds and many nectivorous bats, must supplement their nectar-drinking with protein from insects in order to sustain their own growth. Bees are grouped within the insects in the order Hymenoptera , which includes the sawflies, wasps, and ants (see this chapter , question 4: How are bees classified?). Many of the members of this order have a sting that is used to defend the nest. Although bees and wasps are often mistaken for one another, these two types of insects are quite different. First, bees and wasps have different temperaments. While bees are often characterized as aggressive, they are typically docile and harmless, using only their stings when provoked near the hive. Yellow jackets , on the other hand, can be quite aggressive, even when away from the nest. Moreover, it is wasps that are likely to invade your picnic, not bees. Indeed, bees are misunderstood, and their bad reputation is a result of being confused with their more aggressive cousins. Question 2: What is special about honey bees? Answer: Honey bees, the focal bees of this book, lead very complex social lives; but most bees live alone, don’t make or store honey, and only very rarely sting. Approximately 85 percent of bee species are more or less solitary, although some species make nests close together, sometimes forming huge aggregations . These clusters of individual nests are like a large apartment complex, with many individuals living in a common location, but each making their own way in the world. Some bees are communal, with several females of the same generation R5192.indb 2 R5192.indb 2 11/30/09 3:02:16 PM 11/30/09 3:02:16 PM BEE BASICS 3 sharing a nest, and about one thousand species of bees live in very small, temporary colonies consisting of a queen and a few daughters. These colonies die out when the weather turns cold, and only some pupa, or in some species the queen, survive the winter. During the warm weather months, the resources in the environment are shared, so as different flower species bloom, different bee species are seen for a few weeks and then they seemingly vanish. Honey bee colonies, in contrast, are huge—often...