Day #161 More jobs for bees

We left off yesterday with the little nurse bees feeding the larvae for six days. At that point, slightly older bees move in to cap off the larval cell so the pupae (that’s what they’re called at this point) can continue growing for 12 days into a baby bee. Those babies emerge and start cleaning cells.

Meanwhile, the nurse bees have gone on to other jobs. Up until they’re about 20 days old, they’ll be capping cells, constructing new comb, tending the queen, guarding the entrance to the hive, fanning the hive to heat or cool it as necessary, accepting nectar and pollen brought in by the forager bees, and packing it into cells, and curing the nectar into honey.

During their busy days, they also have to find the time to take orientation flights, circling the hive until they can recognize it from any angle. Gradually their flights get longer, so they can always find their way back home.

All this in three short weeks.

After that, the glands that produce wax and larval food have shriveled up, so the bees become foragers, traveling up to five miles from the hive to find nectar and pollen.

And it takes twelve bees to make one teaspoon of honey. If you’re ever lucky enough to get some Bees Knees Honey, you’d better appreciate all the work that went into it!

BEEattitude for Day # 161:

       Blessed are those who do their jobs well, for their hive shall thrive.

One thing Fran is grateful for right now:

       The pole bean plants that are beginning to twine up and up.    

http://www.franstewart.com

Day #160 You can't beat a good mechanic

Dan Palmer at AutoStop in Buford has been servicing my cars for more than ten years. First it was a little gray Maxima, then it was LadyBug, my little red Mitsubishi truck, and now he takes good care of ElliBug, the champagne-colored Nissan—the one who has her very own trophy for “the car with the most polka-dots.” (See Day #106  - 1/26/11 for a picture.)

Last week I had an oil change and regular vehicle check, and I got to thinking about how good it is to be able to trust that the person servicing your vehicle will do a good job. That, of course, led me to thinking about bees.

Yes, I know, EVERYTHING leads me to thinking about bees lately.

But bees trust each other to do what needs to be done in the hive. The newly-emerged  (and still rather wobbly) baby bee has her specific job, cleaning and polishing the cells, getting them ready for the next round of egg-laying by the queen. It’s kind of like the oil-change of the bee world.

As she gets a bit older and her exoskeleton hardens a bit, she begins to care for the brood (those are the newly-hatched and very hungry larvae), feeding them royal jelly for 3 days. For the next 3 days, she feeds them regular old worker food, sometimes called bee milk. But this little bee is not simply pulling bee milk from a faucet. Nope. She has to manufacture it from glands in her head.

During those 6 days, each larva increases 500 times in size. That takes a lot of bee milk from those dedicated little workers.

The worker bee still has lots more jobs to go through during her lifespan. But those will wait until tomorrow’s blog.

BEEattitude for Day # 160:

       Blessed are those who know how to repair things, for they shall be ever safe.

One thing Fran is grateful for right now:

       The fresh lettuce I ate from my own garden!   

http://www.franstewart.com