World Bee Day 20 May 2022
Thank you for being interested in bees! Bees are obviously immensely important - I mean really, they have their own WORLD DAY dedicated to them!
Bees have been on the planet for over 100 million years. They evolved with flowering plants, which have been around 125 million years (not all flowering plants need bees or other pollinators - they are wind and water pollinated…)
Worldwide, there are over 20,000 species of bees. Most of these are native or wild bees. Australia has almost 2,000 species of native bees. They are all solitary bees, except the 11 species of social bees (with a queen and hundreds of workers), called Tetragonula and Austroplebeia. Tasmania has numerous native species, all of which are solitary. (Records that show maybe pre-colonial times, Tasmania had one species of social native bee…)
Our favourite facts about honeybees:
They dance often (this is how they tell each other where the best flowers are)
Every female performs each job within the hive (cleaning the hive, feeding the young, feeding and attending the queen, guarding the entrance, heating and cooling the hive, gathering nectar and pollen)
They can count to 4 or 5
They know their right from their left
They DREAM! (Yes, this is scientifically proven - when given a new task in the evening, by the next day they perform the task better, showing that they have considered it while they slept overnight - dreaming…)
A hive has a few “super groomers” who specialise in keeping the other bees clean, called ALLOGROOMERS - it is shown that they have the healthiest gut microbes and spread these beneficial bacteria to those less healthy, thus raising the overall health of the hive
Queen honeybees mate with between 15-30 drones (males) and only mate for an approximate one-week period in their life, storing all the sperm gathered in this short time for the rest of their life (up to 5 years in nature)
Queen honeybees can lay up to 2,000 eggs a day at the height of their season (from that store of sperm in their spermatheca.
Male honeybees lose their penis, and thus their life, after mating.
We end with a few bee jokes…
What happens when a bee burps near the queen? It gets a royal pardon.
What do unionized bees ask for? More honey and shorter working flowers.
What do you call a bee you can’t understand? A mumble bee.
What do you get if you cross a bee with a dog? A bee-gle.
What’s a bee’s favourite vegetable? Beetroot.
Where did Noah keep his bees? In his archive.
Why do bees hum? Because they can’t remember the words.
Which sport do bees like the most? Rug-bee.
What’s a bee’s favourite novel? The Great Gats-bee.
What do bees use to build roads? Nec-tar.
What do you call a bee that can’t make up its mind? A maybe.
