ECONNECTION
Bees
by Karen Dusek

I hope you’re enjoying the spring wildflowers. Keep in mind that these beauties, as well as about one-third of the fruits, vegetables and even meat we eat, would not be present without the help of pollinators. Chief among those most beneficial of insects are the more than 20,000 known species of bees (worldwide).

Bees often get a bad rap because of a single small appendage called a stinger, through which a small amount of venom is pumped into the victim. This is the bee’s only mode of defense, a selfless one in the case of honeybees, since they die after a single sting. Unlike other bees, their stinger is barbed on the end, causing it to stick in the victim’s skin. When the bee flies off, a portion of its abdomen is pulled off with it, including the venom sac, nerves, muscles and part of the digestive tract, resulting in the bee’s death.

Most bees in this country, with the exception of the introduced Africanized honeybee (more commonly known as the “killer bee,” thanks to media hype), are gentle creatures (some are actually stingless), typically stinging only when they or their hives are threatened. If you do make them angry by disturbing their nest, however, beware. Upset bees release a pheromone that sends an alarm to other bees in the colony, making them more likely to attack and helping them zero in on the victim.

Houston Beekeepers (webmaster@houstonbeekeepers.org) recommend flight rather than fight if you disturb a nest. If you can, find refuge in a house or vehicle. Otherwise, run as fast as you can for as long as you need to.

“Do not stand around and do not think that by remaining motionless that you can get out of the difficulty,” their Web site states. “But please keep this in mind: Bee stings are rare, and fatalities from bee stings are extremely rare.” Most fatalities are the result of allergic reactions. According to some estimates, it takes about 1,500 bee stings to kill a healthy (non-allergic) 150-pound adult.

If you are stung by a honeybee, the important thing is to remove the stinger as quickly as possible, say Visscher, Vetter and Camazine, entomologists who studied the advisability of following the commonly believed theory that scraping it out with a credit card or knife was preferable to pulling it out. The longer the stinger remains in the skin, the more venom is released, they concluded.

Wasps, hornets and yellow jackets are more aggressive. Rather than feeding on nectar and, in the process, pollinating flowers, they consume animal protein. Yellow jackets, which are yellow with black stripes, are often mistaken for bees; however, unlike bees, they make paper-like nests in tree stumps, hollow pipes or in the ground.

Although Asia, Africa, Indonesia, Japan and other parts of the world are home to native honeybee species, the honeybee that we have come to depend on for the sweetener it produces and as a pollinator of the plants we love (Apis mellifera) is native to Europe, migrating to this country from Mexico, where it was imported by Spanish conquerors and, later, directly from Europe by the Virginia colonists, who also brought with them crops requiring pollination. Escapees from domestic hives were called “wild” bees, but, like domestic pets that have escaped or been abandoned and left to fend on their own, they are, in reality, “feral.” Native Americans referred to them as “white man’s fly.” Like the white man, the bees flew westward, often 100 to 200 miles in advance of human “civilization.” They were flummoxed by the Rockies, however, and had to be brought to California by ship in the mid-1800s.

The honeybee feeds on nectar, sucking the sweet liquid out of flowers with its long, straw-like proboscis. The nectar is stored in the honey stomach (a second stomach is part of their digestive tract), which holds about 70 mg of fluid. When the honey stomach is full, the bee goes back to the hive, where more worker bees suck out the nectar, chew it for a while to make it more digestible by adding enzyme-laden saliva that turns the complex sugars into simple sugars, and then disperse it around the honeycomb. As water evaporates from the nectar, it becomes thick and syrupy. The bees speed up the process by fanning their wings. When the honey reaches the right consistency, the honeycomb cells are plugged with wax, providing a store of food that can be eaten in the winter or when food is scarce. (Honeybees do not hibernate but, rather, cluster together on top of the combs in the hive, which provides them enough body heat to maintain normal activities such as eating and caring for their young.) It takes between 100 and 1,500 flowers to fill one bee’s honey stomach. A single colony eats from 120 to 200 pounds of honey in a year.

In contrast, bumblebees mark their flowers with a “scent mark” that discourages other bumblebees from sipping at the same trough, and collect nectar in a storage compartment called a crop. The nectar is emptied into either a brood cell to be eaten by the larvae or into a wax storage cell. Because it is runny, rather than thick and condensed like honey, it has little appeal to humans.

As honeybees suck nectar, pollen collects on their back legs. (If you look closely at a bee at work, you can likely see these “pollen baskets.”) When the bee moves to the next flower, it transfers the pollen to the plant’s reproductive organs, making seed production possible.

The bee colony consists of a queen, approximately 500 stingerless male drones (which only exist to mate with the queen), and as many as 50,000 sterile female workers, which provide childcare and maid service, as well as bringing home the bacon, so to speak. The workers die when their wings wear out. The queen, on the other hand, can live for as long as two years, producing as many as 2,000 eggs each day or 400,000 a year. A true monarchy, there can be only one queen. All contenders are expunged.

Honeybees communicate with one another by shaking their bodies in what is poetically referred to as a “waggle dance,” as well as with “pulsing sounds.” These movements and sounds relay to other members of their colony how far and in what direction they have to fly to reach food. (Time, Nov. 6, 2006)

For the past two decades, the future of honeybees has been of concern. Two species of mite, the Varroa mite and tracheal mite, first found in the U.S. in 1987 and 1984, respectively, have been responsible for the destruction of innumerable honeybees. The Varroa mite kills both adults and larvae, while tracheal mites kill adults by damaging their respiratory systems. The heavy use of pesticides worldwide has also led to the demise of honeybees. A disease known as colony collapse disorder (CCD) in which bees have been disappearing from hives for no explicable reason is a more recent development that is confounding scientists. About 25 states have been affected thus far, including Michigan.

One bright spot that could lead to a more promising outlook is the discovery by Zachary Huang, an associate professor in entomology at Michigan State University, of how gender is determined in honeybees, which will make it easier for breeders to raise new queens.

You can help honeybees and other pollinators by planting flowering plants, maintaining your gardens and lawn organically - using compost and natural fertilizers and avoiding harmful pesticides and by not killing them. If a colony swarms on your property, rather than destroying it, call a beekeeper for advice. I lived in a condo where honeybees had made homes between the outside and inside walls. Honey dripped from the doorbells. Rather than call an exterminator, the homeowners association asked for help from a local beekeeper, who captured the queen. The rest of the bees followed.

For more information, check out the Michigan Teachers and Students Honeybee Apiary Project for Ecology (MITSHAPE) Web site at www.oakland.edu/MITSHAPE/links.html or www.cyberbee.net, or visit your local library.

You may e-mail Karen at karen@lakeshoreguardian.com.