BEEs are DANCING

Hey guys!!! Do you want to know what are bees? How about honey bees? Honey bees are super-important pollinators for flowers, fruits and vegetables. This means that they help other plants grow! Bees transfer pollen between the male and female parts, allowing plants to grow seeds and fruit. But did you know how bees live, how they communicate and what is the issues about bees? 

                      HOW BEES LIVE?

Bees live in the hive. There are three types of bees in the honey bee colony which is a single queen, thousands of female workers and hundreds of the male drones. During April and May, the queen bee lays day and night and each egg taking about 20 seconds. That’s over 2000 eggs a day, more than her own body weight. Do you want to know something? Actually, the queen mates only once and holds sufficient sperm from the male drones to lay eggs for 3-5 years, incidentally the drone bee dies in the process which must come as a major disappointment for him. It’s sound weird right? For the eggs, there is three types of wax cell used. The smallest cells produce female worker bees; the largest cells will become mole drone; a very special cell that hangs vertically downwards is used to produce new queen. The fact about male drone bees is the male drone bee has no father but does have a grandfather. A healthy queen bee is continually emitting pheromones which is a bee perfume that only the bees in the hive can smell. These pheromone odors tell bees in the colony that the queen is still with them and all is well in the hive.

How long does a bee live? In the summer a worker bee only lives for about 40 days. As no young are raised over the winter months, the workers born in the autumn will live until the following spring. The most important fact about bee is the queen can live up to 5 years while the beekeeper of a queen is past her prime in her third year.

              HOW BEES COMMUNICATE?

The bees perform a group of movements called the 'waggle dance talk'. They do this to inform other worker bees of the exact location of the food sources. Some of these locations can be up to five hundred feet from their hive. Wow!  Bees fly from their colony looking for nectar and pollen. When that are successful in locating good food supplies, they turn to their hive and performs a dance on the honeycomb. At first, the bee walks a straight line while shaking its abdomen vigorously. The bee also makes a buzzing sound with its wings. Bees have two waggle dance talk variations to direct other colony members to the food source when it is closer to their hive. After the honey bee has performed the waggle dance talk, they may also share part of the food they found with other bees in the colony.

Communicating the path to follow is more complex because the bee performing the waggle dance talk will align their body in the exact direction of where the food is in accordance with the sun. The dance pattern looks like a figure-eight, as the bee keeps repeating the straight part of the movement every time it circles back to the center area again. The round dance has a number of circular movements that are narrow while the sickle dance and its pattern is crescent-shaped and these dance can tell other bees the direction of the foods. It’s sound nice right. Actually I was shocked when I did some research about bees. They made me feel appreciate to the nature.

          CURRENT ISSUES IN BEES AND                                     BEEKEEPING

Did you know that bees are facing extinction? Did you ever wonder about the reason behind all of these? 

First, the honeybees in the world are having really serious health problems.  DO you know why?? Since 2006 beekeepers have been noticing their honeybee populations have been dying off at increasingly rapid rates. The biggest cause is the parasite called the Varroa destructor, a type of mite found to be highly resistant to the insecticides that US beekeepers have used in attempts to control the mites from inside the beehives. Moreover, new virus species have been found in the US and several of these have been associated with Colony Collapse Disorder. Honeybee Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) as this loss of bee phenomenon has been called is currently recognized as such an urgent crisis. What? You don’t know what is CCD? Hahaha… Actually… Actually… Actually I also don’t know more about this disorder. Sorry.

Besides, the use of pesticides in agriculture is also one of the reasons why bees are facing extinction. Since the end of the World War II, the use of pesticides in agriculture has increased exponentially. Relatedly, it is now suggested that the widespread use of pesticides known as neonicotinoids is having a detrimental impact on bees. Neonicotinoids, which are chemically similar to nicotine, are an extremely popular pesticides are terrible for the environment, and they are killing the organisms that help the world and human survive. Bees love Nicotine but Nicotine kill bees!!!!

Last, the climate change also cause the death of the bees. During the climate change, the bees become inactive. So, the bees are lazy to find their foods and finally died. Apparently, the bees also have their lazy time even though they are one of the hard-working insect.

The conclusion that I can make from all of these is if all bees in the world dies human will not survive.

Have fun reading!