Honey Bees are the most collaborative species in the world. Each hive comprises thousands of bees working together in order to build and sustain the colony. Within the colony, each bee is assigned with a role. Queen’s job is simple — she creates the foundation of the beehive and lay eggs for future generations. There is usually a single queen in the hive. Also, queen bees have the duty to regulate the hive’s activities. Worker bees are female bees who take care of housekeeping of the hive, foraging, feeding the queen bee and drones, taking care of larvae, and collecting pollen and nectar. They work so hard that their life span is around 6 weeks. And lastly, the drones are male bees whose main role is to mate. They are most active during spring and summer and die as winter approaches. Fun fact is that male bee can mate only once and dies soon after it. This is because the ejaculation is so strong that it ruptures endophallus, leaving the bulb of endophallus inside the queen bee.
With a brain the size of a seed, how do bees have such great work ethics? It is part of their genes and it starts with the queen bee who has the unique ability to designate the sex of her children. Besides this, bees are excellent mathematicians, they can calculate angles and also comprehend the roundness of the earth. But the most important mathematical marvel in honey bees’ life is their hive. The design of the hive is perfect. Bees need a safe place to secure their entire colony and a place to store nectar which will ripe into honey. For this, they need some serious space optimization. They use honey wax to make the hive. But the problem is that a single ounce of honey wax is produced from eight ounces of honey. In order to minimize their work and design a safe and spacious hive, they develop Hexagonal structure — this uses the least amount of honey wax, provides the most amount of space and also provides a sturdier structure.
The honeycomb structure isn’t the only contribution of Honey Bees. They produce honey, a sugary syrup with medicinal property. Bees eat insects that damage crop like mites, spiders and also help in pollination. Moreso, One out of three meals eaten by humans is made possible because of honey bees. They help winemakers by biting grapes and kickstarting fermentation. If all honey bees die, the plant will slowly start to deteriorate leading to starvation of millions of people.
Honey bees are disappearing at a very rapid rate. Disease, parasite or starvation doesn’t conclude to this cause, there is more to it. This mysterious disappearance of bees is known as Colony Collapse Disorder. Despite the fact that scientists do not surely know the exact reason, they have suggested : Pesticides and chemicals, depriving queen bees’ immunity due to hybridization of bees to produce honey on commercial levels, stress because of human activities and many more.
Honey bees are now fighting for survival. It would be a catastrophe if they lost this fight. This is a conundrum we have to solve if we want to continue to live with an abundance and diversity of food. We are deeply connected to other life forms and we have to take better care of our surroundings — if not for the beauty of nature but at least for ourselves.