In late summer, you can sometimes observe a mysterious natural spectacle at the bees‘ entrance: the ghost bees. These strange bees stand out because of their unusual color. Instead of the regular black chitin shell and the brown, orange bristles, these bees shine with a whitish sheen. This coloration can vary in intensity. Some bees only have a white spot on their back, others are almost completely covered in white powder.

Ghost bee with a white spot on its back. Photo: Fabian Kalis

Otherwise, these ghost bees do not show that there is anything special about them. The other bees do not seem bothered by the mysterious phenomena either. Whether white or not, all bees go about their daily activities as if nothing is going on.

At first glance, these bees appear sick. You might think that a fungal infection is causing trouble here. The white coating gives the impression that the bees are moldy. New beekeepers in particular, who are not yet familiar with this spectacle, can panic at the sight. But what is happening here is not bad at all, but a completely normal and harmless natural phenomenon.

If you look very carefully, you can see that the bees all fly out in their normal coloring at first. Only after their foraging flight do some of them return transformed into ghosts. The white coloring often increases over the day. So somewhere along their foraging flights the bees are slowly turned into white ghosts.

White powdered bee on a Himalayan balsam flower. Photo: Fabian Kalis

The reason for this magic is of course a plant that the bees visit. It is a very special plant that only blooms in late summer and offers the bees a rich source of nectar at this otherwise flower-sparse time of year. The bees can really fill their bellies with the rich occurrence of this plant and collect supplies for the winter. We are talking about Himalayan balsam (Impatiens glandulifera). The light pink to purple flowers of these plants contain a lot of nectar as well as a large amount of pollen. They are also so large that the bees disappear completely inside them when they want to get to the precious contents. This means that the entire bee body is powdered with the snow-white pollen of the plant. The more flowers a bee visits, the more intensively it is powdered with the shiny pollen, until at some point it flies home as a bright white ghost bee.

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth is dead. A great and sad loss for the British monarchy. But it’s not only the people who mourn. Hardly anyone knows that many bee colonies also belong to the royal family. The beehives that are located on the grounds surrounding Buckingham Palace and Clarence House were the reigning monarch’s personal bees.

The royal bees were now informed of the death of their mistress with an archaic ritual. This was the job of John Chapple, guardian of the royal bees, who has been looking after the Queen’s bees for a good 15 years. The reason for this odd act is an old superstition known as “Telling the bees” which is still living folklore in English-speaking countries. According to this, bee colonies have to be informed about the death of their master or mistress through a special ritual and dressed in black cloths. If one does not do this, one fears that the bee colonies would follow the deceased into the realm of the dead and die themselves. In the worst case, this could even result in the death of the new master of the bees.

With the saying “The mistress is dead, but don’t you go. Your master will be a good master to you”, the beekeeper told the queen’s bee colonies the sad news after gently tapping on their hives to get the bees‘ attention. He then informed the bee colonies who now is the new master of the bees. In this case, that is the new reigning king, King Charles III. Finally, long black cloths are tied around the beehives. Of course, noble black ribbons, which are tied together with stylish little bows, were used for this royal occasion. These ribbons remain on the hives as long as the funeral ceremonies for the deceased regent continue. This procedure is intended to give the bees an opportunity to mourn the loss of their mistress. John Chapple also asked the bees to be kind to their new master, King Chalres III.

The Widow – Painting by Charles Napier Hemy: A widow and her son telling the bees of a death in the family. 1895

The message must be conveyed to each bee colony personally and individually. In this case, this was a manageable undertaking: The royal bee population consists only of 7 beehives. Two hives are located at Clarence House and five hives at Buckingham Palace.

John Chapple’s path to becoming the royal beekeeper was more of an unplanned accident. One day, the palace gardener unexpectedly invited him by e-mail to talk about bees, the 79-year-old recalls. Chapple initially thought it was a bee problem on the royal estates. It is not uncommon for beekeepers to be contacted about swarms of bees. But the palace had other plans: it was not a question of catching bees, but of acquiring and caring for new bee colonies. The Queen should start to keep royal bees. And without further ado, beekeeper John Chapple was henceforth declared royal beekeeper, who was to take care of Her Majesty’s bees from then on. However, whether he continues to be the guardian of the royal bees under the reign of King Charles III is currently uncertain.

Text: Fabian Kalis

Source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11199259/Royal-beekeeper-informed-Queens-bees-HM-died-King-Charles-new-boss.html

In addition to the delicious honey, other products from the beehive are also very popular. As a natural remedy or natural food supplement: propolis, pollen and the like have long been used in traditional applications. Another less-known product from the bee world is the legendary royal jelly.

A majestic queen bee (center of image) surrounded by her worker bees. Hundreds of them have to die for a single jar of royal jelly. Photo: Matthew Greger, pixabay.com

Not only is it used in high-priced cosmetics, but also in alternative medicine. Many people swear by this special substance from the bees. Countless healing effects are attributed to the miracle substance. It is said to be a fountain of youth for the skin and body and to bring new vitality to weakened and burned-out bodies. In fact, it’s even occasionally touted as a cure for cancer. However, it is often questionable which effects can be empirically proven and which stem more from wishful thinking in alternative medicine. Nevertheless, as a beekeeper, I am often asked if I also sell royal jelly. The demand for the supposed miracle substance from the hive is great.

The answer to this question is a resounding no, though. I do not harvest royal jelly from my own apiary, nor do I sell this bee product. And that I do with conviction. The whole thing however has nothing to do with the fact that harvesting and processing royal jelly is very time-consuming and expensive, rather there are ethical reasons that prevent me from doing so. In my opinion, the harvest of royal jelly is a massacre of the bees and does not fit in with a natural way of beekeeping. It is an act of animal cruelty and contempt for life.

Royal jelly is a nutritious jelly that worker bees produce themselves in special glands. The larvae of the young queens are fed this juice. It’s this substance that makes the difference whether a barren, simple worker bee or a majestic queen bee arises from a larva. Only the larvae that receive sufficient royal jelly develop into young queens, the only fully developed females in the hive. The larvae of the young queens are fed with the special substance up until they metamorphose into adult animals. In the sealed cells, they swim, so to speak, in a supply of royal jelly. Worker larvae, on the other hand, are only fed the precious commodity for a short time at the beginning of their development. They will then only receive a mixture of perga (fermented pollen) and honey for their further diet.

Honeycomb cells filled with pollen (left) and eggs & larvae (right). Photo: xiSerge, pixabay.com

Royal jelly is therefore a natural substance that is able to turn simple workers into true queens. No wonder it’s so popular. Who doesn’t want a piece of that? The name is also important. The name Royal jelly or Gelee royal, as the French call it, sells well because it sounds sublime and high-quality. Even if hardly anyone knows what royal jelly actually is, the name leaves no doubt that it is something that is intended for queens and kings. And that surely must be good.

Natural queen cells filled with larvae and royal jelly. Photo: 용한배, pixabay.com

But how does the special feed intended for the growing offspring of bees get into the hands of human consumers? The answer to this is simple: abortion. In order to be able to harvest the royal jelly, the baby bees (larvae) must be removed from the cells. They are torn from their protective cell, which is very similar to a uterus, and die within a very short time because outside the protective cell and without the nutritious food supply, the larvae undercool and starve basically instantly. A loss that doesn’t matter to the beekeeper, because the larvae have already done their job. The desired royal jelly is now in the cells and can be harvested.

But in such a cell there is not very much of the desired jelly. Only a few milliliters of royal jelly can be harvested per aborted queen. In addition, royal jelly can only be harvested with expensive, specialized equipment and must be refrigerated or freeze-dried after harvesting. The harvest of this substance is therefore associated with high costs and a lot of work for the beekeeper. And how can the whole thing be profitable, if you can only harvest the tiniest amounts per abortion? The solution is quite simple: mass abortion.

Destroyed, natural brood cells with bee larvae (middle, bottom). Photo: xiSerge, pixabay.com

The beekeepers artificially stimulate the bee colonies to raise an unnatural amount of young queens. After the old queen bee has been removed from the hive (usually killed, which causes immense stress on the bees), frames of artificial queen cells are placed in the hive. The beekeeper places a larva in each of these cells beforehand, which he can take from the cells in the brood nest of the colony. The worker bees from the colony now begin an emergency program (the loss of the queen means the death of the entire colony in the worst case) to care for and raise the new young queens in the artificial cells so that they can have a new queen in the colony as quickly as possible. Normally, the bees only do this with a handful of cells when there is a natural loss of their queen. With this artificial method, however, hundreds of queen larvae per colony can be raised at the same time.

Natural queen cell on a honeycomb (middle, top). Photo: PollyDot, pixabay.com

Once the cells have reached the peak of their filling level, they are harvested. „Harvest“ in this case is a euphemism for mass murder or mass abortion. Hundreds of young queens are now being aborted in laborious manual work. Meanwhile, the cells freed from the unnecessary baby bees can be emptied with a special vacuum cleaner. However, even with this method of mass abortion, only about 500 g of the coveted substance can be harvested per colony per year. This explains the high price of the popular product.

The royal jelly must then be stored in a cool place so that it does not spoil. It is often freeze-dried to preserve it. The poor victims of this mass abortion, on the other hand, are ignored. They can simply be thrown on the ground next to the beehives to die. Fortunately, the larvae are so tiny that it is difficult to see them with the naked eye. And they don’t have the cute little round eyes common in mammals, either. So, it is easy to forget about the true nature of this questionable execution.

The result of this mass abortion can now be bottled and marketed at high prices. There are enough customers. Because when it comes to (supposed) healing powers, it doesn’t matter if a mass abortion has to be carried out for it. So the next time you want to buy a cosmetic product with royal jelly, think about how many abortions beautiful skin is worth to you.

Text: Fabian Kalis

Even people who don’t have a degree in biology know that flying insects that live on land have very little in common with fish. Bees are insects and fish are fish. In the wide variety of life, these are two areas that are anything but closely related. In this case, no one would think of claiming that bees are even remotely related to fish or even fish themselves, right?

Are bees actually marine animals?

Well, as absurd as it may sound, a California court has now ruled exactly that: bees can now legally be considered fish. At least according to California law. How this strange ruling came about and why it even makes sense requires some explanation.

In this particular case, it is actually not about bees, but about bumblebees. Why the headlines are all about bees is explained as follows: bumble bees and bees are often lumped together in English-speaking countries. Both bumblebees and bees are colloquially referred to as bees. For many English speakers, bumblebees are a type of bee. However, since the court ruling is a landmark decision, the new case law not only affects bumblebees but also bees (and many other species as well). So in this case we sure can talk about bees.

The said ruling, which was released on May 31, 2022, overturned an earlier ruling that found bumblebees were not considered a protected species under the California Endangered Species Act. The background is that the wording of this regulation only provides for the protection of „native species or subspecies of a bird, mammal, fish, amphibian, reptile, or plant.“. Insects and other invertebrates (which also includes bees and bumblebees) are not included in this list and have therefore not been included in the list of species protected under this regulation. At least up to now.

The California court however has now ruled that bumblebees fall within the definition of „fish“ under that regulation and can therefore be included in the list of protected species. The Court argued as follows: The regulation itself defines the term “fish” as

„a wild fish, mollusk, crustacean, invertebrate, amphibian, or part, spawn, or ovum of any of those animals“

Since insects (and thus also our bees and bumblebees) are also invertebrates, they clearly fall under the definition of fish described in the regulation itself, according to the court in its reasoning.

With that decision, the California court overturned a previous ruling by the Sacramento District Court from 2020 that had ruled that this definition in the regulation only applied to marine creatures. Invertebrates could therefore only be considered fish for the purposes of this regulation if they lived in water.

A bumble bee in a poppy flower

While the 2020 decision clearly makes more sense from a logical point of view, the ruling however is definitely the more sensible one ecologically. The background to all the legal confusion and the somewhat strange ruling was a petition from 2018 that demanded that 4 endangered bumblebee species in California shall be included in the list of protected species in order to obtain special legal protection. The decision of the previous court back than meant that the local authorities lacked the legal basis to enforce this special protection. Their hands were tied.

With the new ruling from California, the endangered bumblebee species can now get the protection they need on a solid legal basis. Furthermore, this ruling also opens up the possibility that further species of terrestrial invertebrates can be included in the future if necessary. For it is clear after this ruling: All invertebrates are fish enough to be legally considered fish, even if they live on land and are actually not fish but insects.

Text: Fabian Kalis

Images: www.pixabay.com

Sources: https://edition.cnn.com/2022/06/06/us/california-bees-fish-court-ruling-scn-trnd/index.html

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/who-knew-bees-are-fish-2022-06-02/

No time for reading? Check out the video on Youtube:

Restoring Old Skeps For Beekeeping (using WHAT?!) – Watch on Youtube

I like beekeeping. And even more so traditional and historic beekeeping. But my interest isn’t just theoretical. I like to try things out and experience first-hand, what it is like to use these old techniques and customs in real life. Where I live– northern Germany that is – the traditional way of keeping bees is using Skeps made of straw. Straw is a versatile material, it’s cheap and can be found in abundance, wherever there is agriculture.

But there is also a downside to using straw as a building material. It is not very resistant to rain, and humidity. If it isn’t kept dry it will soon start to rot. No problem in warmer climates, where it doesn’t rain a lot.  But where I live, we get quite a bit of Rainfall all year round.

When using skeps made of straw in such conditions, the skeps need to be protected from the weather. And that can be done in many ways. You can build a shelter, or you can put on a protective layer of let’s say clay or adobe. People used whatever worked, was cheap, and could be acquired easily. And where I live, well, here this happened to be poop.

Yeah, sounds gross right. But it is not as bad as you might expect.  People didn’t use just any poop though. They only used a very specific kind of poop. And turns out, that acquiring this specific kind of poop wasn’t that easy at all in our modern world. Agriculture has changed a lot over the past generations and with this change, plenty was lost on the way. And so was the perfect poop.

So, it took me a while to get the right kind of poop for my Skep project. Actually, it took several years. Who would’ve known that I would spend this much time of my adult life in the search for the perfect poop…?

I’ve been already using skeps in my apiary for a while now. But up until today I only used old skeps that were already in working conditions when I bought them. Old skeps can last a very long time. It wasn’t uncommon for a skep to be used for many generations of a beekeeping family. When protected right, even skeps made of straw can last for centuries. But from time to time these skeps need a little maintenance. Over time the protective layer cracks, falls off and has to be replaced.

And this is the project I took on for now. Some of my old skeps were a little bit beat down from years of facing the harsh weather, so it was time for me to restore them. I also had a newly made skep that needed its first protective coat.

After finally finding a source for the right kind of poop, I was very excited.  I mean who doesn’t get excited about getting a huge load of poop for their project?

But what is this perfect poop and what makes it so special? Why is it, that you only can use this sort of poop for your skeps and nothing else? Is it just tradition or are there any practical reasons? In theory, I already knew the answer but once I did the poopwork myself it all started to really make sense. This is the beauty of hands-on projects.

The magic poop for beekeeping comes from cattle. But how is cattle poop any special and rare you might ask? But more on that later

First, let’s get our hands dirty.  before you can apply a new coat of poop one must prepare the skeps by getting rid of cracked and loose parts of the former plaster.

When preparing a used skep for a new swarm of bees you also must extract the old combs. This is easiest with a special dedicated skep beekeeping tool, which is called a skep knife. You can also use this tool when the skep is occupied to check in on your bees. You can use it to bend the combs to get a better look or to cut off combs for harvesting honey.

In the skeps, the combs are supported by little dowels made of rosewood, which are pierced through the skep from one side to the other. When removing combs all the way up to the top of the skep you must extract those as well to loosen the combs.

When the skeps are empty and prepared, you can start applying the poop plaster. Gloves are optional. I was told, that using your bare hands is better, for the cattle poop is very good for your skin. But for now, I didn’t want to go too crazy and put on at least a little protective layer.

Now the fun begins. Working with cattle poop is actually quite fun. I tried different techniques to smear it on until I figured out a way that worked. You want to get a good and even coverage all over the skep.

So, back to our poop problem: What makes this poop so special and hard to come by? There are tons of farms all around the world. And on these farms, there is even more cattle poop.

But here is the thing: the poop from cattle that are fed with any kind of processed feed doesn’t work for your skeps. You need to have poop from cattle, that are pasture-raised with no artificial extras or additives to their diet.  Their poop must have the exact right consistency.

So, it all comes down to the right diet of the cattle.  And you don’t get that in modern conventional agriculture. You can only find such conditions on organic cattle farms. But there is even more to that. Even the poop from organic cattle farms isn’t always right. The consistency of the poop changes over the year. And there is only one time in the whole year where the poop is just right. And that is at the beginning of spring typically around may. It is the time when the pasture grows in its full juicy glory, and the cattle are eating a big load of fresh nutritious grass for the first time after the long winter. This seasonal diet change gives the cattle a very runny kind of poop with plant fibers that are digested and broken down just the right amount so that they are neither too big nor too small. The perfect mix for your skeps.

And this poop also trumps materials like clay or adobe. Those materials, once dry tend to crack and fall off very easily. The poop on the other hand remains a little flexible even when dried up.

Fresh poop is the best, as it already comes in the right viscosity. But you can also use poop that has dried up a little by just mixing it with the right amount of water. Again, you must get the consistency just right. Too much or too little water and the poop mixture will not stick to your skeps. It took me a while to figure out the perfect mix. But once you hit the sweet spot, your plastering material becomes magical, and you can easily forget what kind of substance you are working with. Such poop from happy and healthy cattle has a surprisingly low odor.

After applying the poop, you let the skeps sit in the sun for several hours until the plaster is all dried up. Once dried up, the poop has absolutely no smell to it anymore.  Now you put back the dowels and reopen the entrance hole.

 

Finally, you rub-down the inside walls of the freshly pooped on skep with a brush of fresh meadowsweet. This gives the skep a nice smell which is believed to lure in wild swarms and to keep swarms you put in yourself from venturing out again. This old tradition might seem a little bit superstitious at first, but modern research has shown, that the essential oil of meadowsweet contains the same chemical compounds, that are produced by swarming bees themselves when they mark a potential new home for their colony.

 

And just like this, the once beat-down skep is looking great again and is ready for its new tenants.

The bees seem to enjoy their new home. It Isn’t a shitty place after all, is it?

Her Majesty the Queen Bee presents the royal recipe for cooked hornets. What you need: a fresh live hornet, 20-25 strong worker bees, and a few minutes time. Cover the hornet with the worker bees, set the wings to vibrate, and cook the hornets at around 43 ° C for several minutes.

A yet to bee cooked hornet in its hive.

These instructions are by no means fun. Admittedly, the bees are of course not interested in preparing a delicious meal. But the honey bees are actually able to cook hornets. How exactly and why they do it is an exciting story.

The bees defend their beehive very vigilantly against all kinds of predators and enemies. Nobody who does not belong to the beehive is allowed to enter the inside. Regardless of whether it is a wasp, mouse, badger, or bear: anyone who dares to approach the entrance hole or wants to steal the precious honey will be put to flight by the watchful guardian bees with painful stings. In the case of large mammals, it is the pain that is supposed to keep the animals from the planned robbery. For smaller insects, the stings are deadly. The Venom kills the predators and the hive is saved. For the hornets, this method doesn’t work though. The tough hornets are unimpressed by stings and immune to the bee venom. The hornets just don’t give a fuck. They carry on with their mission.

The Entrance of the beehive: Well protected by several guardian bees.

Especially in late summer, many hornets are looking for some sweet treats. The scent of honey from the entrance hole attracts some daring hornets to the bees. Brave and without considering the danger of this action, many a hornet ventures past the stinging guards at the entrance hole into the interior of the bee colony. The bee venom doesn’t bother the hornets. No matter how many stings they get, the bee venom cannot stop the large insects from plundering the precious honey supply. A hopeless situation for the bees? Not at all. The clever honeybees have developed a very special defense method especially for the hornets: They cook the hornets.

The basis for this strange action is that hornets are more sensitive to heat than bees. The hornets die at temperatures above 42 ° C. Bees, on the other hand, can withstand temperatures of up to 44 ° C for a short time. This tiny difference in heat tolerance enables the bees to use heat to kill the hornets without harming themselves. To do this, numerous bees surround the hornet and begin to vibrate their wings to generate heat. The ball of hornet and bees is heated to a  temperature of just over 42 ° C within a few minutes. So the poor hornet is slowly being cooked to death. The brave worker bees, on the other hand, survive this brief temperature rise unscathed.

With this method, the bees manage to defeat the robust intruders without their sting. Of course, the hornets are not eaten by the bees. They didn’t cook them for Food. It was purely a defense. But the dead hornets are then too heavy for the little workers to carry out. So that the lifeless hornet does not rot inside the beehive and spreads germs and diseases, the dead hornet is mummified by the bees. Yes, you read that right. The bees mummify the dead hornets. In fact, bees invented mummification. The Egyptians copied this technique from bees and refined it. And the bees don’t just mummify hornets, but every animal that perishes within the beehive and is too heavy to carry out. The lifeless bodies are prepared by the bees and then embalmed with propolis. But that’s a story for another day.

Text: Fabian Kalis

Pictures: www.pixabay.com

The merry month of May, the time of sunny days, summer mood, and outdoor activities. This year, however, the weather turned the merry much more into a dreary … Rain, the cold, wind, and even more rain shaped the appearance of the normally bright and warm spring month. The few days on which it has not rained once this month can be counted on one hand. And you don’t even need your thumb… After the dreary winter, a rainy spring anyway and all the madness of our time, I was definitely not the only one looking forward to May. Finally be able to soak up the sun again, be outside and enjoy nature. Unfortunately, nature saw things differently this year. That gnaws at the mind. And not just with us humans. The displeasure with this weather situation is also clearly noticeable among the bees.

For the bees, May and June are usually the high points in their annual development. The number of worker bees, the number of honeycombs built and the size of the brood nest reach their maximum at the summer solstice. As early as May, the colonies were literally bursting at the seams. Spring blossoms in an ocean of ​​thousands of different colors and the hard-working insects find nectar and pollen everywhere. Now is also the time for swarms of bees. The hives split and form young colonies. It is the time of pure joie de vivre for both bees and beekeepers.

But this year the bees could hardly participate in nature’s rich table. The innumerable flowers of spring, such as apple blossom, dandelion, and rapeseed, were not visited on many days due to the heavy rain. As a beekeeper, you can tell that the bees were not in a very good mood about this situation either. The otherwise peaceable ladies greeted everyone who dared to go too close to the flight hole, stinging and grumbling.

But what exactly do the bees do when it rains? Why can’t they fly out when it rains and pollinate the flowers and collect nectar? What actually happens to a bee that is surprised by the rain during its excursion?

There is a baffling answer to the last of these questions: Bees cannot get wet when it rains. When the raindrops rain down from the sky, they really pick up speed. The heavy drops of water race towards the ground. In doing so, they displace the air that is below them and create A pressure wave: This pressure wave may seem insignificant and minimal to us humans. For the light bees, however, the world looks very different. The pressure wave that a falling drop of water pushes under it is sufficient to displace a flying bee. So if a drop of water approaches a flying bee, the pressure wave will throw it away before the drop of water can touch it. A flying bee cannot get wet in the rain. Isn’t that amazing? Since the bees are surrounded by countless raindrops in a rain shower, they are thrown around from one pressure wave to another pressure wave. A coordinated flight is not possible under these conditions. The bees use a large amount of energy to keep their trajectory halfway upright. Therefore, flying bees that are surprised by the rain shower usually look for a safe place to hang out until the weather gets better again.

But with the non-flying bees, those that sit on a flower, on a leaf, or on the ground, the natural rain protection unfortunately no longer works. These bees have a firm hold and feel the full power of the water drop. The unfortunate specimens that get a raindrop directly are bathed fully in the cold water. In this state, they are initially unable to fly. They will have to wait for the sun to dry them up completely before they can continue their onward flight.

Still, light rain is nothing to keep the bees from flying out and visiting blossoms. In fact, you can still see them in the rain on their collective flights, at least when there is only light rain. The bees at the entrance hole fly in and out regardless of the wet weather. The bees can therefore continue to fly out even in light rain and complete their collecting flights. However, air traffic is significantly reduced. This is more due to the flowers themselves. Most flowers do not like rain either and close again when it rains heavily or for long periods of time to protect the precious pollen. And if there are no open flowers, then there is nothing to collect. Therefore, the bees do not fly out at all in heavy rain. At such times, the worker bees sit idly inside the colony and wait impatiently for drier times. It can get really tight in the beehive in such times. And the female workers who continue to work their inside work have more difficult working conditions in the bee colony due to the now very tight conditions, while the foraging bees just hang around lazily. No wonder that there is discontent and the bees are more irritable than normal.

For this reason, you should be particularly careful in rainy weather not to go too close to the bees‘ entrance hole. As a beekeeper, you should also avoid looking into the skeps and beehives in such weather. Not only because the bees will then clearly show you that this is the wrong time. We would certainly not find it funny ourselves if someone took the roof off our house and let the rain into our rooms.

Bumblebee in the rain on a tansy flower

Text: Fabian Kalis

Photo credits: Roman Grac from pixabay.com, Steve Buissinne from pixabay.com, Krzystof Niewolny from pixabay.com

In fact, it is amazing enough that bees have populated the entire world with the exception of Antarctica (and the parts of China where they were successfully exterminated). No matter how warm or cold it is, wherever there are flowers, there are specialized bee species that ensure the local pollination of the plants. There are even bees in areas in the icy Arctic and the hostile Sahara.

But a place where you would definitely not expect the bees is space. And yet the little insects made it there too. Not on their own, of course, they owe their space voyages to curious scientists. But in purely quantitative terms, the bees are superior to man when it comes to space travel: 6815 of them have made it into space (or rather, into orbit). So far there have been more bees in space than people.

But what reason is there to send the hard-working little pollinators so far away from their natural environment with all the blooming plants? And what do the bees actually say about it?

So far there have been 3 space missions in which bees have been sent into space. The first of them was in 1982. On this first mission, 14 individual bees were put into orbit to study how weightlessness affects their ability to fly and their behavior. Such experiments have already been tested with other insects. The result: After a few uncontrolled flights due to the weightlessness, the insects gave up their flight attempts completely and from then on only moved crawling through their dwellings. With the very intelligent bees, one hoped for a different result. Unfortunately, the 14 individual bees, detached from their natural way of life as a colony, were not really capable of surviving and the experiment did not produce any new results.

As a result, two new bee experiments were brought to the space station in 1984 with the Challenger. Here, two special space-suitable beehives (bee enclosure modules, BEM for short) including honeycombs, and each with 3400 bees (including a queen bee) were sent into space. These were actually viable mini bee colonies. The planned experiments could now be carried out with real bee colonies. In addition to the flight behavior in weightlessness, one wanted to study the honeycomb construction behavior in weightlessness.

A „BEM“ (Bee enclosure module) onboard the ISS.
Photo: NASA

These bees, too, initially only made very uncontrolled flights in weightlessness and at the beginning constantly bumped against the walls of their bee space travel modules. However, because honey bees are extremely adaptive, they quickly developed new strategies for locomotion in the new environment. After just seven days, the bees were able to fly without problems even in weightlessness. This distinguishes them from all other insects that were tested in weightlessness. The queen bee also normally laid eggs in the cells of the comb. What is even more astonishing: The bees were even able to build their honeycomb structure without any problems despite the lack of gravity. This is a particularly astonishing result since the common doctrine is that the bees orient the alignment of their honeycomb structure on the basis of gravity. The honeycombs always hang vertically facing the ground. Even in zero gravity, all honeycombs were built in a uniform “downwards” direction.

An astronaut observes the bees in zewro gravity.
Photo: NASA

Overall, this research shows that bees hold many more secrets than we previously believed and that they are extraordinarily adaptable.

I wonder what the astronauts thought of these experiments. I can imagine that floating through space in a confined space together with possibly  6,800 bees in an isolated capsule is not pleasant for everyone. But I’m sure NASA has done everything possible here to develop escape-proof space beehives. After all, this was the most expensive bee experiment in history to date.

Anyone who has now done the math in their head will say: “But that was only 6814 bees. There’s still one missing.” And that’s exactly right. The last bee was a lone fighter and was recently sent into space. However, it is not an involuntary passenger who accidentally sat in the space capsule when taking off, but an art project of the Federal Art Hall in Germany. There are bess living in several beehives on the roof of the Federal Art Hall. For a special exhibition called “Outerspace”, one of these bees was enclosed in synthetic resin and shot into space on May 28, 2014, together with the astronaut Alexander Gerst. After this poor bee, degraded to an art object, had completed its excursion into space, it was brought back to earth again and has since been admired in the exhibition. So you could say that she is the most famous of the space bees, although, unlike the other 6814 bees, she was not even there alive.

Did the bees also produce cosmic honey?

Of course, the space bees had no way of collecting nectar, and therefore producing a special space honey on the space station was not a possible outcome. They instead were fed with regular sugar solution. However, there is an interesting anecdote to report from the episode “The Sting”, Episode 12, Season 4 of the animated series “Futurama”. In this fictional story, the crew of the space courier Planet Express is supposed to collect space honey from gigantic bees living in space. As appropriate for such extraordinary honey, this honey has very special properties: 1 spoon has a calming effect, 2 spoons cause deep sleep. However, a warning is given against consuming more than 2 spoons. 3 spoons are supposed to induce sleep that is so deep that you never wake up from it again. So it is clearly a psychoactive honey. Fittingly, the whole plot revolves around experiences that the protagonist Leela experiences in a delirium induced by the space bees. The whole thing may be a purely fictional story, but when it comes to cool psychoactive honey, an intoxicating space honey clearly takes the forefront.

 

Astrobees: The autonomous bee robots on the ISS

Astronaut Anne McLain with the Astrobee robot „Bumble“ on the ISS.
Photo: NASA

But the futuristic story continues in a no less exciting way in our real world: under the name Astrobees, 3 autonomous, intelligent, flying robots have been operating on the ISS for some time. These square cubes are intended to support the astronauts in their daily tasks. They owe their name to the humming noise they make when they float through weightlessness. To prevent collisions between humans and machines in tight spaces, the small robots are equipped with flashing lights that indicate their destination during flight. Since intelligent, humming space bee robots that fly independently through the space station seems a bit spooky not only to me, the models were later equipped with an animated pair of eyes, which is shown on the display on the front. A facial expression is now simulated in a comic manner, which is intended to loosen up the situation between humans and robots. Since another task of these little robots is to research the interactions between humans and robots in space, this is a suitable feature. The three small boxes look like flying construction site radios, but they are state-of-the-art, super expensive devices that could also come straight from a science fiction film. By the way, they go by the names Bumble, Honey, and Queen. After the docking station, which the robots fly to independently for charging purposes, was brought to the space station and installed there, the first two robots Bumble & Honey reached their place of use on April 17, 2019. On July 25, 2019, the third robot, which goes by the name of Queen, followed with another cargo mission.

These three futuristic space robots are now also available for free research. Anyone with the necessary amounts of cash can now book a research slot directly from NASA and carry out their own research with the space bee robots on the ISS. The future is now. I think it’s great that the first autonomous space robots, which are in no way inferior to the models from science fiction films, are named after the bees.

Construction site radio or state-of-the-art robot? The three Astrobees Queen, Honey and Bumble (from left)
Photo: NASA

Text: Fabian Kalis

Image source: all images from the NASA image archive, http://www.nasa.gov

With the first warm spring days, thoughts of the beautiful things of the warm seasons come to mind: summer sun, beach, and outdoor fun. What of course should not be missing in such weather is cool ice cream. The classic ice cream in the ice cream cone made from dairy is particularly popular here. A sweet and delicious treat for young and old. What hardly anyone thinks about, however, is the long chain of production steps that precede this summer fun. And it doesn’t start with the cows that provide the milk for cream production, it is the bees. They ensure the pollination of the plants that serve the cows as a source of food and thus form the basis of all dairy products. And here the bees sometimes have a really bad job. The flowering meadows with buzzing bees in bright sunshine may give a romantic picture, but hidden from view, exciting processes take place here. And it’s not always fun and games for the bees.

One of the most important plants in the diet of dairy cows is alfalfa (Medicago sativa). This protein-rich plant is the basis for almost all feed for the dairy farm. The ingredients of the plant ensure an increased milk production and thus improve the milk yield. The cows love this plant both directly from the pasture and processed in the feed. The bees are also happy about the many purple flowers that keep their nectar ready in the alfalfa fields.

Honeybee on an alfalfa flower

But what exactly is the problem with the whole thing? The flowers of the alfalfa have a very special property: In order to ensure reproduction, they don’t rely on pollen getting stuck in the bees‘ bristle dress by chance. These flowers make sure that every bee that nibbles on the precious nectar also carries a large load of pollen to the next flower. For this purpose, the plant has developed a mechanism that hurls a concentrated load of pollen at the head of the bees with great momentum. The bees are literally hit in the face by the flower.

The Landing of a pollinating insect on the keel of the flower releases the stamens which are normally hidden under the wings of the flowers. They fold down and slap a load of pollen on the pollinator’s heads before they fold back again to their normal protected position, where they remain hidden until the next victim flies around.

The honeybees don’t seem to be particularly thrilled about this spectacle. They learn very quickly that there are other ways to get the nectar here. After a few painful learning experiences, they collect the nectar sideways from the inside of the flower and thus avoid triggering the mechanism. For the flowers, however, there is no successful pollination. As a result, only 1% of the flowers are pollinated by bees.

Different species of bumblebee seem to have fewer problems with this spectacle. They are the main pollinators of alfalfa and are not impressed by the punch on their heads. Solitary leafcutter bees (Megachile rotundata) are also effective pollinators. This type of bee is the most actively used solitary bee in the world in agriculture. In order to ensure successful pollination of the large alfalfa cultivation areas, areas are deliberately chosen in which a large number of wild bumblebee species occur or a large number of leafcutter bees are artificially settled.

So the next time you enjoy ice cream, think about how many bees had to take a slap in the face.

Text: Fabian Kalis

Image source: Ivar Leidus, CC-BY-SA 4.0, <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.de>, via Wikimedia Commons, no changes were made to the image.

In this new addition, I`ll share some of the interesting traditional and ancient tales, fables, and stories about bees that different cultures have to offer. Also, I’ll post bee poetry by myself and others.