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 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.
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
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.
Within the tribe of the Melliponini, there are three species of stingless, state-forming bees in the genus Triguna, which have discovered a food source very special for bees. They are the species Trigona necrophaga, T. crassipes and T. hypogea. The species name necrophaga is made up of the Greek words “nekros” (death) and “phagein” (to eat). Like all other types of bees, these bees collect plant nectar in order to produce honey from them, but they do not cover their protein requirements by bringing in pollen. These bees collect the flesh of the decaying remains of dead animals. They are scavengers. They are also called Vulture Bees. These special species are found exclusively in South and Central America and the Caribbean.
The bees usually penetrate the carcass through the eyes and then collect the meat that is best for them inside. This is first salivated so that the bee’s own enzymes pre-digest the meat before it is gnawed, chewed, and chopped up, and stored in the special honey stomach that all bees have, which is normally used to transport large amounts of nectar. The meat is then brought home to the beehive. There the fleshy pulp, which has meanwhile been enriched with the body’s own enzymes from the collecting bee and traces of sweet plant nectars, which are always found in the honey stomachs, is passed on to the workers in the bee colony. Exactly as with the nectar, this pulp is now passed from bee to bee and in the process more and more thickened and more and more enriched with enzymes. In this process, nectar slowly turns into honey. The meat pulp, together with the small amounts of nectar from the honey stomachs, turns into a honey-like, sugar-rich, high-protein pulp. Like the finished honey, this meat honey pulp is now stored in storage containers made of wax. You could say that honey is produced here, which consists largely of rotten meat. This special pulp is the food for the young bees. The larvae need a high protein diet in order to grow up quickly and to build up enough reserves for their metamorphosis into adult bees.
Different insects feeding on a dead animal body
The finished meat honey has a dark gray-brown color and a sour taste with a slight sweetness. Some native residents of neotropical regions where these bees live also use this special meat honey for food purposes. It contains far less sugar than conventional honey, but the high content of animal protein still makes it a valuable source of food.
This honey is truly a curiosity among the special types of honey. I would love to have a taste. Unfortunately, this pleasure has so far been denied to me. With regard to the already difficult legal status of honey from alien (honey)bee species (see my article Honey Discrimination), this honey presents a particular difficulty.
The nests of the genus Trigona are usually built within burrows in the ground or hollow trunks. They build their nests out of beeswax, propolis, and plant resins. The honey and meat pulp are stored in large egg-shaped wax pots, around which the small brood combs are arranged. Pure honey made from plant nectar and honeydew and the special meat honey are not necessarily stored separately from each other. Mixtures of these two are therefore often created.
Text: Fabian Kalis
Image source: Luis Fernández García, CC BY-SA 2.5 ES <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/es/deed.en>, via Wikimedia Commons
Have you ever wondered how the bees reproduce? If you are not a beekeeper probably not. But let me tell you, it is one heck of a story.
It all starts in the swarm season, which here in Germany is in the spring, mostly in May, when the bee colonies start to produce a lot of male bees, the drones. These cute little creatures are much bigger than the female worker bees, even bigger than the queen herself, and are easily recognized by their huge eyes.
Unlike the female worker bees, the drones don’t have a stinger. And they also won’t work as the females do. They can’t even feed themselves and have to be fed by the worker bees. Their only use inside the hive is for heating purposes when it is really cold at night. Since they are bigger, they can produce a lot more heat than the smaller females by vibrating with their wings. The drones live as vagabonds and fly out to different hives in the area, enjoying their bachelor’s life.
A hatching drone
But this lazy lifestyle comes to an end when the young queens hatch and the swarming begins. When a bee colony wants to split, the worker bees start to build special cells, where new queens are produced. The larvae inside these cells are fed with the special gelee royale, which makes them become fertile females: queens. The worker bees are infertile females. These special cells are also bigger thane the ones for the worker bees since the queens are much bigger. Right before the new queens hatch, they make a loud noise inside their cell. This is the signal for the old queen to fly out with a big chunk of the worker bees to start a new colony. These bees are the beeswarms.
A male bee
The reaming bees greet their freshly hatched queen and continue their everyday business. The first queen that hatches in a hive immediately starts killing the queens in the other cells before they are able to hatch. There can only be one queen to reign.
In this stage, the young queen can’t lay eggs yet. She has to be impregnated by the male bees. And this is where it gets really interesting. The young queen of course isn’t impregnated by the drones inside the hive, these are her own brothers. In order to mate with drones from other hives, she has to meet up with them in a special place: the mating spot.
A drone resting on a leaf
Until now, we have no idea how the bees choose this location, because it changes every year. But all young queens and all the drones know instantly where to go at this moment. And the spot can be up to 20 km away from a single hive. Yet all the bees now exactly when and where to go, even although they never have been there themselves nor has there been another bee from the previous year mating, which could have told them where to go. How they know this is one of the many mysteries, the bees still have left until now.
When the queens enter the mating spot, they are immediately greeted by hundreds of drones. Now the mating begins. Males and females come together on the mating flight. The drone attaches himself to the queen and right when he finishes his penis explodes (you can even hear a little „bang“ if you are close enough, so know you know where the word „banging“ comes from…) and the male dies and falls off onto the ground. But the queen isn’t satisfied yet. She mates with up to 20 different drones. But the drones after the first one have a slightly more difficult job. In order to be able to mate with the queen, they have to pull out the remaining penis from the previous drone, which is still inside the queen.
When the queen has acquired enough semen to last her whole life (she stores them in a special organ and uses one sperm at a time to fertilize each egg), she flies back home to her own bee colony. During the mating flight, she is accompanied by a small number of worker bees, which protect her during the process. Back home one of those bees has to pull out the last drone’s penis. Now her ovaries evolve fully and she becomes unable to fly (remember the old queen wich flies out while swarming? She has to be put on a special diet a few days prior in order to be able to fly again). After a few days, the queen starts laying eggs and the cycle of life continues.
Topic introduction: what I’ll post in this category.
Ever wondered how it really works with the birds and the bees? Let me answer this and give you an inside look into the life of bees. Don’t worry, it won’t be like one of those boring educational films you know back from school. I’ll try to keep it fun and easy. So, if you want to find out about how bee vomit becomes honey and what it’s all about with the exploding penises in the mating process of the bees and other crazy stories, then this is the place for you.
