One of my cycling buddies, the President of Sioux Bee Honey Association, gelled my
latent interest in beekeeping. I keep about 4 or 5 hives. They stay
in Iowa, and I over winter them. The harvested honey is mostly clover and
basswood. Better than any store.
Do you know all the honeybees in North
America are not native? They are from Italy, Europe, and the Caucuses,
mostly.
Do you know insect pollination is required for
some vegetables, such as melons, apples, and oranges to name a few; and without
those insects we would have no fruit? Think about that when you eat an
orange, apple or watermelon.
Did you know that any honeybees you
see now are "kept" bees?
Because of imported mites and diseases no bees
can survive long without the medications from a beekeeper.
The Queen of the hive would be a female worker, but she became a queen
because the workers fed her Royal Jelly right after she came from her egg.
A virgin queen flies out of the hive and mates many times in the air
with multiple males. All the semen the queen needs is stored in her
body for the rest of her life, and after returning to the hive, she never
mates again.
Worker bees are all female, and can sting only once. The stinger
is a modified female egg laying organ, and is detached when the worker
stings. The stinger will continue injecting even though detached.
But the worker will die.
Males (called drones) can't sting at all as they have no stingers.
They have big rounded bodies and large eyes. They are males because
they were not fertilized by the queen. The queen decides if she wants
a male (drone) or worker (female) by fertilizing the laid eggs or not.
Males have one half the genetic material of the female and are created by
parthenogenesis.
Males don't do any work, but run around the hive eating, living the life
of leisure. They leave the hive to fly around looking for new queens
that are in the mood for mating. If the drone mates, his male member
is torn off and he dies! Tough going, eh? Anyway, even if he
hangs around the hive, his days are numbered. With the first cold
weather of Fall, the worker bees drag all the male drones out of the hive,
and push them out the front door. They will be all dead with the
morning frost, because the hive goes dormant in 'cluster' for most of the
winter, and doesn't need them until Spring! Being a non-working
'drone' is tolerated by the hive, until the drone is not needed anymore.
Do you know any humans like that?
Lastly, honeybees won't sting you unless you bother them or their hive.
Those "bees" that attack you are probably wasps, who by nature are very
territorial and aggressive.
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