Any day with temperatures over 55 degrees brings out the honey bees. The infrequent Helleborus foetidus or early flowering witch hazel will be loaded with pollen seekers, a winning strategy for both parties, one is pollinated (a sure bet), the other feeds. These social bees have been beneficial to mankind, in fact keeping honeybees dates back 9,000 years. Scenes painted on cave walls have verified our coexistence, ancient Chinese and Egyptian cultures kept honeybees in hives made of wicker.
The poor honey bee has been assailed by two parasitic mites, partly responsible for what is now referred to as colony collapse disorder or CCD. No single reason has been attributed to the unusually high occurrence of CCD, contributing factors include pesticides (even the mitecide used to treat the parasitic mites that attack them), starvation (not enough sources of pollen), and a lack of immune suppression, which just leads to more questions. Their numbers have dropped all over the world which is very scary. Imagine entire fruit fields that would need pollinated by hand. Imagine the cost of that hand pollinated fruit!
The act of locating flowers by social bees, like honey bees is quite interesting. It's called a bee dance. The mapping or location of each flower is carried back to the hive where the information is passed along as a dance that indicates the location of the flower, relative to the sun. If the source of the food is particularly good, others will join in the dance, altering the dance as the sun moves. Studies have shown that their accuracy can be rated to within twenty degrees in direction and no more than fifteen percent for distance. Three miles from the hive is their working area which is amazing for such a small creature. On many occasions I have seen honeybees on a nocturnal flower prior to its opening. They will gather and force themselves into the flower while it's still tightly rolled, clearly a bee's dance provided the road map. Imagine having the ability to convey a map (so well) with little more than a dance? As a directionally challenged adult, I find it fascinating.
If you would like to do your part in helping with honey bees or pollination in general, plant native flowering plants, they survive better, flower more. Secondly, encourage orchard mason bees. These solitary bees breed via tubes, like open ends of bamboo or holes drilled in wood. Native bees, non-aggressive (like the honey-bee), they are blue-black in color, hard workers and no threat to honey-bees. Mason bee homes can be found at many nurseries and garden centers. Every little bit helps and best of all, your garden will thank-you, maybe even your neighbor's garden.
Funny Honey
Posted by: Karen Rexrode | 01/16/2012 at 11:32 AM