Amazing bees

I didn’t know much about cooking when I was first married. I could boil or fry an egg. I made a concoction of browned hamburger, instant rice, ketchup and chili powder that I called Spanish Rice. I could spread peanut butter and jelly to make a sandwich. That was about it for my collection of recipes. It has taken me a lot of years, but I have learned to cook and have expanded my repertoire of recipes. One technique that I have learned is how to reduce liquids. I reduce meat drippings when making gravy. I reduce sauces when cooking stir fry. Recently I have taken to reducing vinegar. There is a particularly tasty balsamic vinegar that I like to reduce to about the consistency of honey and drizzle on avocado toast or over eggs for breakfast.

A honey bee has a very small brain compared to a human. Everything about a bee is pretty small. But honey bees know how to make reductions. The nectar that bees gather from flowers contains about 70% water. The honey that I harvest from the bee hives on the farm isa bout 17% water. When a worker bee returns from foraging in the flowers, it deposits nectar in an open cell. Although some say that the nectar is vomited, but the comparison with human functions is not accurate. Bees have two stomachs. The one that carries nectar to the hive is not the one that nourished the bee. The cell into which the nectar is deposited is in itself a marvel. The hexagonal shape is structurally strong and provides a place for eggs to be deposited, mature into larvae, which become mature bees as they eat their way out of the cell. Worker bees, which are all female, have eight glands in their abdomen that produce wax. The wax hardens as soon as it is secreted, forming a scale on the exterior of the bee. A single bee will produce up to eight scales every 12 hours. Producing wax is the work of young bees. The wax glands are most productive when the bee is 12 - 18 days old.

When the bee becomes older it moves on to other jobs. Some bees become nurses that care for larvae and remain in the hive. Others become foragers and head out to bring back pollen and nectar to the hive. Forager bees use their proboscis to suck up nectar, a substance produced by flowers to attract pollinators. The forager bee will visit between 50 and 100 flowers on each trip from the hive. When she returns to the hive half of her total weight will be pollen and nectar. That is enough cargo capacity to impress an aeronautical engineer.

For each pound of honey, foragers fly up to 55,000 miles and visit two million flowers. The top speed of a bee is around 15 mph, but most travel slower. A single bee’s contribution over the course of a lifetime is about 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey. After the nectar is deposited in the cells, the bees fan the open cells with their wings, causing water to evaporate. A bee’s wings beat 12,000 beats per minute. When the honey is sufficiently reduced, it is more viscous which protects it from forming mold. Once the honey is thickened, young worker bees seal the cell with a wax cap protecting the honey from moisture and contaminants.

The capped cells are what I take from the hive when I harvest honey. I uncap the cells and allow gravity to do its work and fill jars with unfiltered honey for our family to use. The bees in our colonies produce a lot of excess honey each year. We leave some honey in the hive for the bees to consume over the winter and I pay close attention. If they are running short of honey, I feed them sugar water to keep the colony healthy through the season when they don’t have access to flowers for additional nectar and pollen.

Bees live and die as a colony. A queen might live for several years and can lay up to 2,000 eggs a day during the busy summer season. Egg production slows in the winter. In the early spring, a colony has between 10,000 and 15,000 bees. In the height of the summer season, the colony will have between 50,000 and 80,000 individuals. During the working season and individual bee lives about six weeks. That means that the colony is producing ten or more generations of bees each summer.

As pollinators, which is a contribution to agriculture that far exceeds the value of harvested honey, bees have some unique characteristics. While some pollinating insects, such as moths, navigate almost exclusively by scent, honey bees can navigate by visual clues as well as scent. What is more they can communicate and teach other bees the path to good sources of nectar and pollen. Back at the hive they perform elaborate dances which illustrate the path to the nectar. Those dances are witnessed by other bees that become able to replicate the flight path. This makes honey bees slightly less susceptible to confusion caused by air pollution. Studies have shown that pollinating insects are far less productive when even small amounts of pollutants such as ozone are present.

Pollution, however, has a dramatic effect on the cycles of life of a colony. Bees, like other insects are threatened by pesticides. The use of pesticides can have a dramatic and catastrophic effect on colonies. Weakened by even trace amounts of chemical pesticides bees become vulnerable to mites and disease.

Various air pollutants also affect flower production causing additional stress on colonies. That combined with the ways that pollutants affect the aromas of flowers is a constant threat to the health of all pollinators, bees included.

We keep fewer bees than the farm could support in part because we don’t want to displace other pollinators. The honey bees supplement the work of butterflies, moths, wasps and other types of bees. I have observed as many as four types of bees on a single lavender plant all working at the same time.

In addition the bees are providing a challenge and an education to an old human male. Observing them has a calming effect. They are natural stress reducers. Moving slowly around the bees keeps them from becoming agitated and stinging. Their gift of honey is also an important ingredient in the food I cook. Unlike some other liquids, I don’t need to reduce honey to benefit from its sweetness. The bees do that work for me.

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