Thanks to bees, we have a variety of food to choose from and we can have a lovely meal. You may wonder how bees help us to eat. It’s simple really – many plants need bees to pollinate the flowers so that the vegetables can grow and new seeds can be produced. A few examples are pumpkin, beetroot, carrots and cauliflower.
When bees sit on the flowers to collect nectar to make honey, the pollen gets stuck to their feet. And when they fly off to another flower, the pollen from the previous flower will get deposited on that flower – that’s a simple way to describe pollination.
Queen bee
The beehive has a matriarchal society, meaning that the queen bee rules the hive. When the queen bee moves out of the hive, every bee in the hive follows her. If the queen bee dies, a new bee will be raised. Worker bees in the hive will see to the queen bee’s every need – they feed her and even clean her waste. And all she has to do is lay eggs, which can reach 2,500 to 3,000 in a single day. Now you know where the saying ‘she thinks she’s the queen bee’ comes from.
Waggle dance
Ever wondered how bees communicate with each other? They do a waggle dance, and during this dance, a bee will tell the other bees where to find food. It doesn’t make sense to us, but bees clearly understand each other. The waggle dance looks like a figure-eight pattern. The bee walks in a circle, turns around and walks the same circle in the opposite direction. When she turns around and makes a little waggle, it communicates certain information to the other bees. Clever, isn’t it?
Gruesome death
Honeybees are generally placid little creatures and normally only sting when they feel threatened. When they do sting an animal or person, the bee dies a horrible death because their stinger gets stuck in the flesh. When they try to pull out their stinger, it literally tears up the little bee’s body, and some of the bee’s organs are also ripped out. And then the bee slowly dies. So, please, be more respectful of bees and be kinder to them.
