Knowing the characteristics and behaviors of bees

HOW TO DISTINGUISH YOUNG OR SICK BEES

At first glance, all the bees inside a hive appear identical to each other. Same body size, same colors, same movements. Young bees, especially newly born ones, immediately appear different from the others, starting from the way they move on the honeycombs. In fact, they have a much slower pace and are shaky and unsteady on their legs compared to their older sisters. They are also covered in a thin silvery down that makes them appear pale, as if faded compared to the characteristic colors of the black and yellow bands. They are completely harmless because they have not yet developed venom and the ability to sting, and they are not even able to fly, to the point that, if they were to accidentally detach themselves from the honeycomb and fall out of the hive, the poor things would no longer be able to get back in on their own. Their sense of direction is not yet developed, so if they were separated from other bees they would die.

When dealing with bees of uncertain health, the first clue is given by the way in which their wings are arranged. Bees have four membranes and, when at rest, the two largest wings are superimposed on the two smaller lower ones. When a bee is not feeling well, the first symptom is given by the full deployment of the four wings, open like a fan or arranged like the letter K.

But obviously there are also other details that help us identify unhealthy bees or those affected by diseases. A particular pathology that often appears around mid-season is called "black disease" or "forest disease". Affected bees lose all the hair on their body, appear completely black and have a swollen and shiny belly. At first they lose the ability to fly, then they are struck by a tremor that slowly leads to their death. 

SWARMING

is a phenomenon whereby a hive divides into two communities, headed by two different queens. In spring, when the population density reaches its maximum peaks, the super organism hive can choose to divide: the old Queen leaves the mother hive taking with her a large number of bees that will very quickly build a new nest elsewhere, while the future young queen remains in the mother hive.

WHAT DO BEES FEED ON

Basically, bees feed on nectar, pollen - fresh food that is collected during flights from flower to flower in the summer - and honey. Nectar is a sugary substance secreted by plants and is mainly composed of three types of simple sugars: fructose, sucrose and glucose. When collected, it is transparent with a very faint aftertaste, which varies depending on the plant and the sugar concentration present inside it. 

COMMUNICATION BETWEEN PLANTS AND BEES IN THE FORM OF VIBRATIONS

How does a single bee know which flowers to avoid, since their sisters have already visited them?

Flowers, like all living things, seem to be able to communicate with their surroundings. Studies have shown that to attract bees, flowers do not only use the scent of their nectar, but also send invisible signals, in the form of vibrations that form a very clear map for bees. Since these insects are also able to distinguish the ultraviolet spectrum, they can easily follow this sort of "luminous" road, finding the flowers that produced it.

Why is a flower not visited twice by bees?

When a bee and a flower come into contact, a flexible magnetic field is generated that warns other insects that the flower has already been visited

BEES HAVE BEEN AROUND 50 MILLION YEARS

Bees have been on Earth for about 50 million years, well before we appeared on the planet. Some recent studies show that bees managed to survive the ice ages, swarming into areas where the climate was more temperate, rich in vegetation and forests in which to take refuge and reproduce. Those areas were typical of southern Europe and therefore it is thought that the first swarms of bees settled in what is now Spain 

AN ORPHANED BEEHIVE

When a beehive is orphaned, the bees emit an unmistakable sound, a noise that tends to grow in intensity. It is a sound produced by the flapping of the wings and indicates that the hive has fallen into a state of prostration due to the absence of the queen. It is therefore necessary to promote a new queen.

The loss of queens in colonies can occur:

1. death from natural causes
2. displacement established by the bees

If a colony remains orphaned for too long, or when for particular reasons the queen dies and the bees no longer have the possibility of raising new ones because there are no young larvae, a phenomenon occurs that, although contained, makes the colony impossible to recover. There is the appearance of daughter bees. They are normal worker bees who, desperate because they cannot raise new larvae, try to lay eggs themselves. It happens that in the absence of the queen's pheromone that keeps them under control, their ovaries develop enough to allow oviposition. However, their eggs have not been fertilized and will only generate males, useless for the purpose of providing the colony with a new queen.

Laborer bees are particularly insidious in a colony because there is no way to identify them: they are identical to normal bees. In some cases, the queen can also become a drone, that is, she begins to lay unfertilized eggs from which only males are born. This happens when she exhausts the quantity of spermatozoa contained in the spermatheca.