Tuesday, 6 June 2023

The bee’s knees

 

The bee’s knees

This expression has been in use since the 1920s, along with similar phrases, like the cat’s whiskers or the gnat’s elbow. All such idioms are used to describe something superlative.

I wondered, ‘Do bees actually have knees?’  In fact, they do. Not only that, they have hairy knees, the hairs being an intrinsic part of collecting pollen. The knees do not form the pollen baskets but are the joints between them. Only the females collect pollen, which is pressed into pollen baskets. Male bees don’t collect pollen; they visit flowers solely to drink the nectar for immediate energy.



The pyracantha bushes are in full flower now and a rich source of pollen. There is a gentle humming of many bees, a relaxing backdrop to a sunny day. The honey bees are very industrious, collecting pollen and drinking nectar.  

They regurgitate nectar to cover the pollen and form pellets which they take back to their hives. The pollen pellets are then formed into bee bread, which is a mixture of pollen, nectar, honey and bee saliva. It is the main food source for adult honey bees and their young, and is stored in cells to feed developing worker and drone larvae.

Newly-emerged worker bees have the job of making beeswax for the colony. Special cells on the bee’s abdomen produce small scales of wax. Bees constantly groom themselves and each other, taking the wax and chewing it with honey and pollen to create the hexagonal wax cells of the honeycomb.

Honey is made from nectar mixed with proteins produced in the bee’s mouth. The resultant mixture is stored in the honeycomb until the water content has been reduced. 

Honey bees are the major producers of honey. Bumble bees make small amounts of honey, but do not live in huge colonies like honey bees, so their honey production could never become a commercial enterprise.

Humans have been benefitting from bee products for about 9,000 years. Ancient pottery artefacts from Europe, the Near East and North Africa have carried traces of beeswax, which suggests that the first farmers kept bees.

Bees originated in Asia around 300,000 years ago and spread rapidly across Europe and Africa. Today, honey bee colonies are under threat across the world. Colony collapse disorder (CCD) was first reported in the USA in 2006. When this happens, the majority of worker bees in a hive disappear and the Queen and remaining young die because they are not being serviced by the huge army of workers that they need to survive.

The causes of CCD are not fully understood and are still being researched. However, it is believed that pesticides, parasites, disease and loss of habitat are major contributory factors.

There are several suggestions that bee-keepers can try in their bid to prevent CCD. One proposal is to replace the old honeycomb with a new one every two or three years to avoid a concentration of harmful chemicals. Stress is not good for bees so it is helpful to make sure there is good ventilation in the hive and also that there is access to plentiful appropriate food.

A parasite that only breeds in honey bee hives and contributes to CCD is the Varroa mite, an external microscopic mite that attaches to the bee and feeds on it, weakening it. It also transmits diseases like deformed wing virus (DWV) to bee larvae. It is the most serious pest for honey bees across the world.

Bees pollinate a huge variety of crops but the bee population is declining and it is imperative to protect it. Our landscapes and our lives would be unimaginable without the intervention of these little insects.

8 comments:

  1. I was looking forward to the bees buzzing around R's sister's lavender bush. Alas the bush had died. They are so interesting to watch.

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    1. They are fascinating. Shame about the lavender bush. I try every year to grow lavender. Maybe I'll succeed this year!

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  2. This says it all: Only the females collect pollen, which is pressed into pollen baskets. Male bees don’t collect pollen; they visit flowers solely to drink the nectar for immediate energy. Sigh

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  3. Males spend their entire lives waiting to mate . . . ;-)

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  4. We love you reserached facts about nature. One thing to note however that bee colonies in natural hives (hollow trees etc) have no ventilation and tend to be hot and humid. Those are the conditions that bees best thrive in but as we have been unable (or unwilling) to build hives with enough insulation to keep them warm we have developed the idea that humidity is a bad thing and that bees should be well ventilated. It is true that cold and damp is really really bad, so cold and dry (ventilated) is better. Ideally we would house bees in spaces that most closely resembled the places they chose in the wild and these would be unventilated and well insulated. They take care of their own ventilation it seems - when left to their own devices.

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    1. That is most interesting. I seem to remember reading somewhere that bees fan their wings to cool the hive. Is that right?

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  5. What an interesting read. Bees are truly fascinating, not to mention life giving. It's a sad thing that they are threatened by "human" behaviour. We should do all we can to provide with the necessary sources of nectar and to avoid use of all harmful pesticides. I'm glad to be doing my bit in our tiny garden. xxx P.S. I wonder if gnats have elbows :-)

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    1. It is sad to know that the bee population is declining so rapidly. We have noticed in our garden how the numbers have decreased over the last decade or two. Tragic. Still, every little effort helps. x x x

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