Scientific name: Apis mellifera mellifera
Other names: Dark European Honeybee, Western Honeybee
The Honeybees are truly the gardener's friend and are not the killer beast depicted in the cinema. If not for them and the other species of bees, plant life would be reduced to mainly wind-pollinated grasses and trees, as they pollinate most of the flowering plants. They have been doing this for millions of years, ever since the angiosperm plants appeared and needed a vector to transfer their pollen.
The native bee Apis mellifera mellifera is one of many species of bee which belong to the insect order Hymenoptera. They have been associated with humans for a long time and cave paintings depict the harvesting of honey 8,000 years ago. Later civilisations domesticated them by providing artificial hives, and breeding has produced the docile Western Honeybee now kept for honey production. Unlike most insects, honeybees remain active throughout the winter and the honey is produced from the nectar of flowers so they will have plenty of food when it is unavailable from plants.
One of their less favourable atributes is their sting, a modified ovipositor (egg-laying tube), combined with a venom gland to create a stinger at the end of the abdomen. Because the stinger is modified from a structure found only in females, male bees cannot sting. When threatened, honeybees will swarm out and attack with their stingers to drive the enemy away, but generally as they forage around they are quite harmless and only sting if accidently caught in clothing.
Bad tempered strains of bees can arise from the crossing of incompatible subspecies. This occured with A. mellifera scutellata, the Africanized Honeybee, a subspecies imported to Brazil from South Africa to cope with tropical conditions. After escaping to the wild it has spread across South and Central America. It is very aggressive and a number of deaths have resulted from mass stinging leading to the term 'killer bees' which has been exploited by Hollywood. The aggressive behaviour evolved in their native Africa where they are predated by Honey Badgers which excavate their nests for the honey and larvae.
Honeybees are social insects and create elaborate nests, or hives, containing up to 20,000 individuals during the summer months. (Domestic hives may have over 80,000 bees.) Working together in a highly structured social order, each bee belongs to one of three specialized groups called castes - queens, drones and workers.
There is one queen in a hive and her main purpose in life is to make more bees. The workers feed a few selected larvae a special food called "royal jelly" which causes them to become queens. When active she can lay over 1,500 eggs per day and will live for two to eight years. She is larger (up to 20mm) and has a longer abdomen than the workers or drones, which she controls by emitting chemical signals called "pheromones". She has chewing mouthparts and her stinger which is curved with no barbs on it, can be used many times.
The drones are male so have no stinger. They live about eight weeks and only a few hundred are ever present in the hive. Their sole function is to mate with a new queen, if one is produced in a given year. They are bigger than the workers and have bigger eyes than the other castes. At the end of the season they are considered non-essential and are driven out of the hive to die.
Worker bees are all sterile females making up the vast majority of the colony and do all the different tasks needed to maintain and operate the hive. Young workers are called house bees which work in the hive doing comb construction, brood rearing, tending the queen and drones, cleaning, temperature regulation (by beating their wings) and defending the hive. Older workers are called field bees foraging outside the hive to gather nectar, pollen, water and certain sticky plant resins used in hive construction. Workers born early in the season will live about 6 weeks while those born in the autumn will live until the following spring. Workers are about 12 mm long and highly specialized for what they do, with a structure called a pollen basket (or corbiculum) on each hind leg, an extra stomach for storing and transporting nectar or honey and four pairs of special glands that secrete beeswax on the underside of their abdomen. They have a straight, barbed stinger which can only be used once. It rips out of their abdomen after use, which kills the bee.In the event of being stung, scrape the bee off with a finger nail or blade; do not pull as gripping the bee or remaining sting will inject more venom. The venom is acid in nature so it can be neutralised by applying an alkaline solution such as Sodium Bicarbonate.
If a colony of bees arrives in your garden there is no need to panic. You should contact a member of your local beekeepers' association and they will advise on the action to take. The easiest way to find them is online, eg. the Ulster Beekeepers Association.
The honeycomb, which is formed at the centre of the hive, consists of flat vertical panels of six-sided cells made of beeswax; it is produced from glands on the underside of the abdomens of young workers between 12 and 15 days old. House bees take the beeswax and form it with their mouths into the honeycomb. The cells within the comb will be used to raise young and to store honey and pollen. The comb is two-sided, with cells on both sides. The nursery area of the hive is called the brood comb, and that is where the queen lays her eggs.
As well as flower nectar, pollen is a food source for the bees. Both are gathered by the field bees as they forage for food. Pollen sticks to the fuzzy hairs which cover their bodies. Some of this pollen rubs off on the next flower they visit, fertilizing the flower and resulting in better fruit production. The pollen provides protein and other essential nutrients for the bees.
Native plants are preferred by the bees to provide nectar. Hawthorn, White Clover, Heather and Blackberry are some of the better providers and Dandelions are in bloom early in the year when the bees are becoming active. Cotoneaster horizontalis is a popular garden shrub for the bees.Bees have had to adapt to the many changes to the flora of the British Isles as agricultural practices have changed. The introduction of improved pasture which relies on nitrogenous fertilizer with the elimination of white clover is one major loss of a nectar source. Another is the close trimming or complete removal of hawthorn hedges which are said to produce the best honey.
Recently the spread of the Varroa mite among the bee population has threatened their future. The only proven method of treatment is by using acaricide chemicals such as Bayvarol and Apistan, but some mites have developed a resistance to these products. It may be possible to breed a resistant strain of bee, as other species such as Apis cerana have developed a defence against the mite.
Another threat is American Foulbrood (AFB), a bacteria which infects the larvae causing them to turn dark brown and die. The bacteria produce persistent spores so there is no cure for an infected colony and it has to be destroyed. A treatment with an antibiotic (Terramycin) in spring and autumn should prevent infection.
The most recent cause of death to a hive is colony collapse disorder which has been found throughout North America where a quarter of the bee population has disappeared, and in parts of Europe. Most of the bees leave the hive within the course of a week never to return, and any which remain are overcome by viruses and fungal infections. There is no explanation for this die-off which threatens the agricultural industry as it has occured in commercial colonies which are used to pollinate crops. It would appear that those kept under organic methods and by individual bee-keepers have not been affected. It is thought that neonicotinoid insecticides used to prevent Varroa mite attacks may be causing the problemas well as the factory conditions the bees are kept under. Other possibilities put forward are that the commercial colonies are transported over great distances causing stress and the large monoculture crops they are used to pollinate. Could it be GM crops?
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