Bees

Bees. I’m sure you’ve heard about how important they are to our food sources, but how important are they really? Honeybees alone pollinate 80% of flowering plants, a lot of which are fruits and vegetables, including but not limited to blackberries, onions, watermelons, almonds, and apples. That’s the impact of just one species of bee! There are 3,500 other species of bees that also pollinate crops, but sadly bee populations are decreasing. 

From April 2020 to April 2021 beekeepers reported losing 45.5% of their colonies. Research has shown that this is because of pesticides, pollutants, and habitat loss, among many other pressing issues. Luckily some landowners are trying to protect the insects that help us maintain the ability to eat by practicing sustainable agriculture.

Now that I have informed you about bee populations decreasing I want to talk about other reasons why they are such cool insects besides the fact that they are responsible for pollinating so much of our food, starting with a fact that I love: almost all workers bees are female. The male bees cannot sting or gather nectar or pollen, and they can’t even feed themselves. Their only role is to reproduce. In fact, during cold winters if the hive doesn’t have enough food the nurse bees (the ones that feed the drones) will starve the males and kick them out of the hive. The reason why they starve the drones is that it makes them less likely to fly back to the hive. Even if the exiled bees did fly back, there are guard bees so they cannot enter the hive. Admittedly this might be interesting only to me.

To some people that last “fun” fact may have been sad so now I’m going to rattle off some happier fun facts. All bees have 5 eyes. The males have bigger eyes so they can find the Queen Bee more easily. A Queen Bee can produce 2,000 eggs per day, and their unfertilized eggs become drone bees. Bees fly at about 20mph, and they have 2 pairs of wings. 

Another reason why bees are so amazing is that they have evolved to communicate through dancing! Their special dance is called the “waggle dance.” A bee will do this to tell the other bees when and where she has found nectar. In the hive, there is a special “dance floor” on which a female bee will perform while other bees gather around her to watch. During this dance, the bee dances in a figure-eight pattern and flutters her wings. The bee will do about 100 of these waggle runs in one dance, depending on how far away the nectar is. This dance does not only tell other bees how far away it is, however, it will also tell other bees how rich the nectar is. It will even communicate where the sun is in relation to the nectar!

Dancing is a very interesting way to communicate but there is an even cuter way that honeybees “talk” to each other! Bees will make a “whooping” sound that is sadly inaudible to human ears, although scientists don’t completely know why they make this sound. According to early studies, scientists once thought that it was a stop signal, used to tell other bees to stop foraging. There were many other ideas of why they make this noise, however. For example, in a recent study, we learned that they make this “whoop” most commonly when they bump into each other! Some compare it to a surprised gasp. I think that it’s just the bees saying a quick sorry for bumping into each other. That sounds way cuter!