|
The honeybee is a colonial insect that is often maintained, fed, and transported by farmers. Honeybees are a subset of
bees which fall into the order Hymenoptera and suborder Apocrita. There are about 20,000 species
of bees which exist all around the world. However there are only four types of Honeybees that are commonly recognized: Apis
florea, Apis dorsata, Apis cerana, and Apis mellifera. They have been domesticated at least since the time of the building of the
Egyptian pyramids.
Honeybees store honey (nectar) in their hives, which provides the energy for flight
muscles and for heating during the winter period, and pollen which supplies protein for
bee brood to grow. Through centuries of selective breeding,
honeybees can produce far more honey than the colony needs. Beekeepers, also
known as "apiarists", harvest the surplus honey.
Origin and distribution
Honeybees probably originated in Tropical Africa and spread from South Africa to Northern
Europe and East into India and China. The
first bees appear in the fossil record in deposits dating about 40
million years ago during the Eocene period. At about 30 million years before present
they appear to have developed social behavior and structurally are virtually identical with modern bees.
Apis mellifera, the most commonly domesticated species, is native to Europe, Asia and Africa. They were bought to
the Americas with the first colonists and are now distributed
world-wide.
Apis mellifera was brought to Virginia in 1622, and numerous other occasions later. Many of the crops that depend on honeybees for pollination have also been
imported since colonial times. Escaped swarms (known as wild bees, but actually feral)
spread rapidly as far as the Great Plains, usually preceding the colonists.
The Native Americans called the honeybee "the white man's fly."
Honeybees did not naturally cross the Rockies; they were carried by ship to California in the early 1850s.
Beekeeping
Beekeepers often provide a place for the colony to live and to store honey in. There are three basic types of beehive: skeps, Langstroth
hives and Top Bar Hives. The type of beehive used has a significant
impact on the ability to keep the colony healthy and on the amount of wax and honey that the colony can produce.
Modern hives also enable beekeepers to transport bees, moving from field to field as the crop needs pollinating and allowing
the beekeper to charge for the pollination services they provide.
In cold climates, some beekeepers have kept colonies alive (with varying success) by moving them indoors for winter. While
this can protect the colonies from extremes of temperature and make winter care and feeding more convenient for the beekeeper, it
can increase the risk of dysentery (see the Nosema section of Diseases of the honeybee) and can create an excessive buildup of carbon dioxide from the
respiration of the bees. Recently inside wintering has been refined by Canadian beekeepers who build large barns just for
wintering bees. Automated ventilation systems assist in the control of CO2 build-up.
Lifecycle
Like other eusocial bees, a colony generally contains one breeding female, or "queen"; a few thousand males, or "drones"; and a large population of sterile female workers. The population of
a healthy hive in mid-summer can average between 40,000 and 80,000 bees. The workers cooperate to find food and are widely
believed to use a pattern of "dancing" (known as the waggledance) to communicate with each other.
Honeybees will sting when they perceive the hive to be threatened. A honeybee that is away from the hive foraging for nectar
or pollen will rarely sting. A honeybee can sting only once. The stinger is a modified ovipositor. It has barbs which lodge in the skin. As the bee pulls away, the stinger rips loose from the bee's
abdomen. During this process, the bee will release alarm pheromones along with the stinger. The bee dies soon after it releases
the stinger. Upon the bee's release of alarm pheromones, it attracts other bees to the location in their defensive behaviors. The
larger drone bees have no stingers at all. The queen bee has a smooth stinger and could sting multiple times, but the queen does
not leave the hive under normal conditions. Her stinger is not for defense of the hive; she only uses it for dispatching rival
queens. Queen breeders who handle multiple queens and have the queen odor on their hands sometimes are stung by a queen.
Products of the Honeybee
Pollination
The honeybee's primary commercial value is as a pollinator of crops. As an
example, in California, the pollination of almonds occurs early in the growing season, before local hives have built up their populations. Almond orchards require two hives per acre for maximum yield
and so the pollination is highly dependent upon the importation of hives from warmer climates.
Honey
Honeybees are also valued for honey which is used as a sweetener in many foods. Honey is actually sweeter than table sugar and
has attractive chemical properties for baking. Honey has a distinctive flavor which leads some people to prefer it over sugar and other sweeteners.
While it is rare for any honey to be produced exclusively from one floral source, honey will take on the flavor of the
dominant flower in the region. Orange blossom, tupelo, and sourwood are favored types in the US. Greece is famous for wild thyme honey and France for lavender and acacia honey.
Most commercially available honey is blended. Monofloral honeys are especially valuable on the market.
In addition to its use as a sweetener, all honey has antibacterial properties and can be used as burn and wound dressing. Manuka, a strong tasting monofloral honey from New Zealand, has been shown to have greatly increased antibacterial
activity and has become widely marketed for this property.
In Europe and Turkey, honeydew is
highly prized. Honeydew is unusual in that the honey is not made from the nectar of flowers but from the excess sugar secretions
of aphids, most importantly the aphid Marchalina hellenica which feeds on the
sap of the Turkish Pine. Honeydew in these regions has a strong piney taste
and it thought to be of medicinal value. Bees collecting this resource have to be fed protein supplements, as honeydew lacks the
protein-rich pollen accompaniment gathered from flowers.
In the hive, their are three major classifications of bees: 1 queen bee, up to about 200 drone bees, and about 20,000 worker
bees. Worker bees are responsible for the major collection of honey. In the typical day, the worker bee will go out to collect
nectar, store it in the crop, and fly back to the hive. As it leaves the flower, the bee will release nasnov pheromones. This
allows many other bees to find their way to their way to the site by smell. Honeybees also release nasnov pheromones at the
entrance of the hive, which allows other worker bees to find their way back in faster and easier. Upon the bee's arrival, it will
regurgitate the nectars from the crop into the wax pit.
Worker bees of a certain age will secrete beeswax from a series of glands on their abdomen. They use the wax to form the walls
and caps of the comb. When honey is harvested, the wax can be gathered to be used in various wax products like candles and seals.
Pollen
Bees collect pollen as a protein source
necessary during brood-rearing. In certain environments, excess pollen can be collected from the hive. It is often eaten as a
health supplement.
Propolis
Propolis (or bee glue) is created from resins and tree saps. Honeybees use propolis to seal cracks
in the hive. Propolis is also sold for its reported health benefits.
Comb honey
This is a popular honey product. Instead of processing, the honey is harvested still in the wax comb.
Cut Comb Honey
Bee problems
- North American honeybee populations were severely depleted by
varroa mite infestations in the early
1990s. Chemical treatments saved most commercial operations and improved cultural
practices and bee breeds are starting to reduce the dependency on miticides (acaracides) by beekeepers. Feral bee populations
were greatly reduced during this period but now are slowly recovering, mostly in areas of mild climate, owing to natural selection for varroa resistance and repopulation by resistant
breeds.
Other Species
There are eleven species within the genus Apis, all of which produce and store honey to some degree. These are the
three that have historically been cultured for or robbed of honey by humans:
- Apis cerana, and Apis florea are small honeybees of southern and southeastern Asia which are cultured for
honey in a similar fashion to A. mellifera. Their stings are often not capable of penetrating human skin, so the hive
and swarms can be handled.
-
- Thermal defense: When their hive is invaded by the Japanese giant hornet (Vespa mandarinia japonica), about 500 Japanese honeybees (A. cerana
japonica) surround the hornet and vibrate until the temperature is raised to 47ºC (117ºF), heating the hornet to death, but
still under their own lethal limit (48-50ºC).
- Apis dorsata, the giant honeybee, is native to south and southeastern Asia, and usually makes its colonies on high
tree limbs, or on cliffs, and sometimes on buildings. It is wild and can be very fierce. It is robbed of its honey periodically
by human honey gatherers, a practice known as honey hunting. Colonies are easily capable of stinging a human being to death when
provoked.
In addition these non-Apis species of honeybees have been cultured or robbed for honey:
- Melipona beecheii, known as the stingless bee, is native to Central America and was cultivated by the Mayans. The bee and its culture are dying out due to deforestation, pesticides, and the labor intensivity of its
honey production. This bee is in some danger of becoming extinct.
- Ten species of genera Trigona and Austroplebeia in Australia produce and store honey. Australian Aborigines
have used this as a source of food. More recently, these bees (called "native bees") in Australia have been cultivated on a
small, "cottage industry"
scale. The most important species for this industry are Trigona carbonaria and Trigona hockingsi.
See also
External links
|