Electric Bees

Have you seen the commercial on TV advertising the Swiffer sweeper?

The swiffer has a cloth that glides across the floor and the bits of dust and debris can't help themselves. They attach themselves to the Swiffer like a magnet.

But what does this have to do with bees? Bees and the Swiffer have a lot in common. If you've ever been to a birthday party and played with balloons then you're like bees and a Swiffer too.

Have you ever rubbed a balloon on your hair and then stuck it to your body? When you rub it you create static electricity.

When the Swiffer rubs across the floor or an object, it creates static electricity too.

Static electricity is like a magnet to little particles like dust..... or something similar to dust.... Pollen.

When a bee flies through the air static electricity builds up in her fur. Then she lands on a pollen covered flower.

The tiny particles of pollen can't help themselves, like magnets they are drawn to the bee and attach themselves to the bee's fur.

This makes it easier for the bee. She'll sweep her legs over her body to collect the pollen.

Then she'll take some of her spit to moisten it to make a lump.

She'll stick the lump to stiff hairs (called pollen baskets) on her back legs.

After that she'll fly home with her load.

So next time you see a Swiffer sweeper, pretend like a bee and give it a try.

Imitation is the Best Form of Flattery

Who do you admire the most in the whole world?

Is it a movie star or a famous singer? A teacher? Your older brother or sister? Or your hero?

Have you ever been tempted to act or dress like them?

If so then your thinking isn't very different than a whole lot of insects.

You see many insects admire bees and wasps. It's because they have stripes which are very fashionable in the insect world... and they have stingers.

Stripes are a warning to others: I have a stinger so don't mess with me!

Have you ever worn striped clothes? If so, you are copying bees and letting everyone around you know that they should be careful.

You might have a stinger too.

Copying is popular in the insect world. It's called insect mimicry.
Insects use mimicry as a disguise to hide like pretending to be a leaf or a tree branch or to scare other insects away with painted big eyes or by releasing a terrible smell.

There are lots of flying and crawling insects that don't have stingers or venom but they want to have stripes so they look like a bee or a wasp. Can you guess why they'd want to look like that?

So that other insects will be afraid of them and think they have a stinger.

[This picture from the Wikipedia web site shows several stingless insects pretending to be wasps].

Next time you're in the garden and you see a striped insect, take a closer look.

Is it a bee or a wasp or another insect pretending to be one? It may well be a little harmless fly, pretending to be a bee.

HONEY

We know that bees collect flower pollen. We know that flowers deliberately attract bees by offering nectar.

The bees put their tongues into the flowers and suck up the nectar.

And we know that the bees fly back to the hive with that precious nectar.

But what happens after that? They make honey!

Let's go inside the hive and find out how the bees do it.

When a bee first arrives back at the hive, she's flying heavy. Her stomach is full of nectar. She'll often be greeted by a house worker bee at the entrance.

She'll unload her nectar to the house bee. They touch tongues and the field bee will release the droplets of nectar to a house bee. Once her stomach is empty the field bee will go back out again to collect another load.

The house bee will climb the frames of comb to the honey area. Once there she'll regurgitate droplets of the nectar to the tip of her tongue. She'll hold them there.

Why does she do that?

She's letting the warm air inside the hive dry up the liquid in the nectar. She'll hold droplets a few times and then she'll dunk down inside the cell and regurgitate all the nectar.

After that she'll go back down the hive to wait for another field bee to come in with another load of nectar.

Next will come more house bees. These will be fanning bees. Their job is to beat their wings to create wind that will blow on the nectar and dry it up. As the liquid evaporates the bee magic begins.

The nectar becomes thicker and thicker. It becomes sweeter and sweeter. The bee might even taste it just to be sure. Mmmmm. It's good. She knows exactly when the honey is thick enough--ripe enough--to be done.

Then more house bees will come. They will be capping bees that can make wax. They'll put lids on the honeycombs to store the honey just like how we store food in jars.

[Picture at left - The yellow stuff in the cells is pollen. The shiny liquid is honey].

When the flowers have faded and winter comes bringing cold winds and snow, the bees will snuggle together in their hive to keep warm.

And while they warm themselves all through the cold months of winter they'll have lots of food--honey.

Honey made from a flower's nectar.

A Flower's Secret: Candy for Bees

Doesn't everybody love sweets? Bees certainly do.

I suppose you could call flowers pros when it comes to making sweets. They make a nectar that bees love just like we love candy.

Last time we looked at flower pollen and how the bees use it as a food for the hive. We examined the special relationship that flowers have with bees. They need help spreading their pollen and the bees are happy to do that for them.

But why do many flowers also make nectar? It's their secret trick: Advertising.

What? Yes, it helps for flowers to advertise to bees.
There are many, many flowers in bloom in summer and the flowers compete to get the bees to come to them and not to the other flowers. They try to make their nectar smell and taste the best. And it works.

The bees have an amazing sense of smell (they sniff with their antennae) and that's how they find which flowers are offering the sweetest smelling nectar.

The bees come and suck up the nectar with their long tongues. And while they're at it the flower's pollen collects on their fur. That's how flower's guarantee their pollen seed gets spread around.

Almost all plants that rely on insect pollination produce both pollen and nectar.

Nectar looks like water except it's sweet. It tastes and smells like flowers which is what gives honey its special flavour and colour.

The bees are happy to have their nectar but they still have to make it into honey. Next time we'll look at how bees turn nectar into honey.

Pollen Face, I Love You

Bees collect nectar from flowers and they also collect a fine powdery substance called pollen.

[This is one of my honey bees, covered in pollen from golden rod flowers. They bloom in the fall. You'll often see them alongside highways, fields and the woods].

Pollen comes in many colours such as: White, yellow, red, orange, blue, purple, green and even black .

[Can you see the coloured pollen in these honeycomb cells? What colours do you see?]

How does pollen get its colour? From the flower. The next time you see flowers, look at the centers. What colour is the powdery pollen? Every flower has its own unique colour.

Some flowers such as poppies and tulips can have black pollen. I'm sure the black pollen tastes just as nice as the red or yellow.

Even tiny flowers can have pollen.

Have you ever stuck your nose into a flower to sniff its perfume? I've done that and I got the yellow powder on my nose. That made me a little bit like a bee.

Pollen is part of the life force of a plant and its needed for a plant to produce its babies...seeds. Those seeds will make new flowers.

Flowers have a special relationship with bees and they are reliant on the bees to help them to create their seeds.

Bees have a special relationship with flowers and they are reliant on the flower's pollen to use as food for their babies.

They need each other for their survival: The flower and the bee.

Here's how it works:

Each flower creates its own unique pollen. The pollen on one flower needs to be put into another flower.

But how can it get there? Flowers don't have legs to walk over and mix their pollin into another flower.

But the flowers know someone who can carry their pollen from one flower to the next. Can use guess who that someone is? Yes, it's the bees.

The bee will fly into a flower. As she digs down into it her fur will become coated with pollen. Her fur is specially designed to hold pollen.

Actually, when a bee flies, her body creates static electricity and that also helps the pollen to stick to her fur. (I'll tell you more about static electricity another time).

The bee will use her legs to scrape some of that pollen up. Then she'll add some of her spit and honey to it to moisten it. Then she'll stick it to her back leg where there's really stiff hairs that will hold it in place.

After that she's ready to fly home to drop off her packages. Then she'll go out and look for more flowers and more pollen.

Pollen is very important to bees because it's full of protein. Baby bee larvae need to eat pollen so they'll grow healthy and strong. Just like how you and I need protein too so we'll grow.

Some people like to eat pollen as a health food or to help their allergies to flowers to be not so bad. Pollen is nutritious and it's full of vitamins. It tastes like flour with sugar added to it. No wonder the bees like it.

This is a tray of pollen that a beekeeper has collected. You can see that it's mostly a green colour. The beekeeper will put this pollen in a jar to sell to people. (In another story I'll tell you how the beekeeper collects pollen from the bees).

Some flowers don't need bees to mix their pollen for them. Plants like wheat that grows in the field (used to make your bread) are pollinated by the wind blowing.

Most flowering plants also offer Nectar to bees. I'll tell you about that next time.

Do you have a question about bees? If you do, you can leave a question in the comments section or you can contact me through my website: http://www.bee-magic.com/.

Bees Have Teeth!

They do have teeth. They really do.

But these teeth aren't for chewing.

We covered mouth parts of the bee previously where we looked at bee mandibles that open and close like a gate and their long soft pointy tongue called a probocsis.

But there are no teeth in a bee's mouth.

So, where are the teeth? On their wings of course!

Are you wondering why a bee would have teeth on their wings? To make it easier to fly of course.

[Note: All these photos are of bumble bees and not honey bees. It's just the photos were really nice wing shots so I wanted to use them].

Here's Why: Bees have four wings. They have a larger wing and a smaller wing on each side.

Most of the time if we see a bee just standing there we see two wings. What we're seeing is the large wings closed up and sitting on top of the smaller wings.

Why do they have four wings? To make flying easier.

When a bee wants to fly she locks the larger and smaller wings together with tiny zipper-like teeth that are located on the edge of the wing.

Once the wings are locked they form two nice large flying wings.

Here's some honey bee flying facts:

* A honeybee can fly 24 km in an hour at a speed of 15 mph.

* Its wings beat 200 times per second or 12,000 beats per minute.

* Most bees fly in a range of about 5 miles from their hive looking for pollen and nectar.

When inside the hive, or when working inside a flower, bees unlock the teeth so they can move their wings over their back.

They do that so their wings won't get damaged while they're working.

A honey bee will also tuck her wings on her back so she can dunk down inside a honeycomb cell.

Bees don't just use their wings for flying. They'll also use them as fans to send out their scents for the other bees to smell. Some of their scents can be "home smell" so a bee outside foraging will be able to sniff her way home.

Another smell could be "Red Alert we're under attack". I bet you can guess what that message means. Yes, sting!

On hot summer days the bees will use their wings as fans to cool the hive by moving hot air out of the hive and bringing cool air in. This is called ventilating the hive.

Bees can do air conditioning to cool the hive on hot days too, but that's another story I'll tell you about another time.

The Nurse Bee

I especially love nurse bees. They are most often newly hatched bees. A newly hatched baby bee will have lots of soft golden fur.

They spend most of their time working inside the hive as a house bee.

Nurses take care of their baby sister and brother larvae. Bees have four stages in their life cycle: Egg, Larva (worm); Pupa, and Bee.


Have you ever had to babysit or take care of your brothers and sisters? If so, then you know what it's like to be a nurse bee.


Nurses take care of the eggs and larva. They feed young larva a pudding-like food called royal jelly and they feed older larvae a mixture of pollen and honey, called bee bread.

[Click on the picture above to enlarge. Then look closely at the cells that aren't capped. Can you see the tiny white larvae curled up inside? Those are the babies that the nurses are taking care of].

They also keep the babies warm. The workers will shiver their wing muscles which generates heat and they will cluster in a mass on top of the honeycombs where the babies are, sharing their body heat.

[Click to enlarge this photo - look carefully at the cells in the middle of the photo. Can you see the tiny rice-like eggs? They will hatch in three days.]


Bees really love their babies and they do everything they can to protect and take care of them.

Nurse bees really are devoted caregivers.