Everyone knows that honey comes from bees. But have we ever studied the bee to learn about how she makes honey? Yes. I said "she". The bees who make the honey are females. They literally kill themselves doing so. And did you know that the object of the bees' making honey is not to make food for us? It is to care for the bee community. THE QUEEN BEE -- her life span can be as long as five years.
The queen bee is the mother of all the future bees. She isn't called QUEEN because she rules the bee community. Her one job is to lay eggs. She can lay as many as 2,500 eggs a day. This is twice her body weight. She can lay fertilized or unfertilized eggs. The worker bees govern how many of these eggs actually hatch, by what they feed the queen.
THE DRONE- his life of leisure is short-lived.
His main purpose in life is to fertilize the eggs of the queen.
The drones are males. They live a life of luxury. They are fed by the worker bees. They do nothing further than fertilizing the eggs of the queen. The drones are handsome creatures, going in and out of the hive as though they owned it. But their life is short. When winter comes they are killed off by the workers. Their job is complete.
THE WORKER BEE:- these are females.
The worker bees are divided into several categories, as we will see later.
The worker bees literally kill themselves working. One of their jobs is to manufacture beeswax, which is used in building their home the honeycomb.
The honeycomb, built by the architect bees is the place where the eggs are placed and cared for by the nurse bees; the young are reared, also by the nurse bees; and the honey, which is gathered by the forager bees, is stored by the warehouse bees.
To build the honeycomb, a swarm of bees, hanging on to one another, build from the top to the bottom. It is the work of some of the bees to clean out the leaves and rubbish. And it is the job of others to guard the hive. If strange bees come along, they are stung to death.
The architect bees shape the first cells, which are hexagonal. They place them back to back. The queen and drone who have no apparatus for mixing wax, take no part in this building. The six-sided cells give maximum strength and space.
When winter comes the architect bees close up the entrance with wax and leave only a tiny passage open. They all huddle together to keep warm. The bees from the outer part of the inner hive change places with those who are in the inner part from time to time.
Egg laying and hatching
The cells for the drones and queens are larger and better ventilated than those of the ordinary bees. The queen, now in her specially-made cell, starts laying eggs.
It takes three or four days for the eggs to hatch. The grubs are fed by nurse bees on bee milk. Three days later they are fed on richer milk. It takes two weeks for the grubs to become fully grown bees. The drones take twenty-five days.
The bees' wax-making is very interesting and wonderful. The abdomen of the bee is made up of six rings under which are little pockets. The bees make the wax by means of certain glands; and then they cluster together to make the atmosphere from 87 to 98 degrees Fahrenheit. Now the wax is molded and cooled into scales which are pushed out of the wax pockets. The pinchers on the hind end of the bee are used to remove the wax scales, passing them one by one to the front legs. The bee then puts the scale into its mouth, chews it up, and puts it into the comb.
The sex of the bee is determined by where the workers put the grub. If they want a queen, they put an egg in the queen cell and feed it a special substance which will develop it into a queen. If they want a drone, the grub is placed in the drone cell, and fed accordingly. All the rest of the grubs are developed into workers, thus are females.
The average beehive produces 30 to 40 pounds of honey in a season. Some give as much as 200 pounds a season; yet a bee can carry only a third of a drop of honey at a time. Think of it!
Bees coming into the hive move more slowly than those leaving, as they are burdened down with their load of honey. A bee's day begins at sun up and ends at sun down, and in the summer that is a long day. No wonder that they live only two or three weeks, and then die of exhaustion. Many of them have their wing torn away and their bodies all scarred with wounds from their labors.
On hot days some of the bees stay behind to fan the queen's cell. They flap their wings to ventilate the hive, fanning from the inside and from the outside with their heads facing the entrance. This fanning goes on night and day, and is so violent that it could blow out a candle.
While the bees travel back to the hive, after having gotten their nectar from flowers, they miraculously manufacture the honey, enroute.
The warehouse bee and the forager bee.
The forager bee passes honey out of her tongue to the warehouse bee, who swallows it and then empties it into a cell. The forager bee goes back for more, sometimes as far as three or four miles. Her path zigzags until she starts for home, sometimes having visited a hundred flowers, in order to fill the honey sac. Then, after emptying her sac at the hive, she is back for more. One bee may visit a thousand flowers in one day.
The pollen gatherers mix pollen with a bit of honey, making a little pollen loaf of bread, which they put it in a basket-like place on their legs and carry it to the hive. If the pollen is exposed to the air, it ferments, so they cover it with a layer of honey to preserve it.
Propolis is a red, sticky substance covering the new shoots of certain trees. The bees draw it off in strings, roll it up, put it in their pollen baskets, and carry it to the hive to dispose of it before it hardens. Other bees are there to help them. The bees chew the wax until it is soft. It is then used for varnish. With this they fill any cracks or holes in the hive to keep out dampness. A new hive is covered by this varnish. If a mouse or snail gets into the hive, the bees sting it to death, then cover it with this varnish and place wax over it, making it like an airtight mausoleum.
Undertaker bees
The undertaker bees look after any bees who die, carrying them out of the hive.
Water carrier bees
Water, a necessity, is never stored. It is carried, as needed, by the water carrier bees.
Chemist bees
When a cell is filled with honey, and before it is sealed with wax, the chemist bees puts in a drop of formic acid from its poison bag, thus preserving the honey by keeping it from fermenting.
Only God can make a bee. Bees are one of the wonders of God's creation.
