The Importance Of Bees In Our Ecosystem?
Without bees, humans wouldn't have much to eat, so next time you get a bee jacket, think about the fact that you're so close to killing one. By far, they are the most important insect pollinators, and their services are essential to flowers, many orchards' fruits and berries, and vegetable and fruit crops. Think of our life with them as a cycle; If they don't have enough to eat, neither will we.
Bees face a number of threats, such as parasites, poor beekeeping practices, climate change, pathogens, agricultural pesticides, and nutritional deficiencies. So, unless a colony of bees has invaded your home or garage, your best bet (for their sake and ours) is to leave them alone.
Honey Bees
In this article, I will mainly focus on bees because they are the primary pollinators of many trees, plants, and crops. Most live in elaborate hives and produce beeswax and honey, though many wild colonies thrive, often in hollow trees.
Description
The bees are hairy and brown in color with orange bands on their bellies. They have a black tail and a black head and chest. Each hind leg contains a basket of pollen, and if they sting you, they only do it once (each bee can only sting once, after which it dies).
Beehive
At specific periods of the year, the beehive comprises a queen, sterile workers, larvae and pupae, and male bees. For example, when an old queen leaves with most of the workers to find a place for a new nest, a swarm forms. After mating, a young queen will rebuild the old colony.
How do you make a queen bee?
There are only three different types of bees in a hive: workers, males (honey bees), and queens, each performing specific duties in the hive. Usually, the queen is the only female in the area. While a beehive contains only one queen, the queen alone cannot start a hive.
New queen worker bees feed the larva a special type of food called "royal jelly", which is richer than the food fed to worker larvae. The jelly, which is secreted by specialized glands in the heads of worker bees, contains water, protein, and sugars and is necessary for the larvae to become a fertile queen bee.
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A queen can lay up to 2,000 eggs per day, and although she can live up to five years, she is usually replaced by a younger queen after only a few years because younger queens can produce more eggs.
The reigning queen may kill the new queen, or one of them may fly away with part of the colony to start a new hive. Only when the queen leaves the hive does she mate with the drones, which are produced just for this purpose. Drones do not have a stinger and do not collect pollen or nectar. Their primary role is to mate with a sterile queen, and only one is successful. So the worker bees kill the remaining males in the colony after the queen has been fertilized.
The emergence of drones and worker bees
Their size is the primary visual difference between worker bees and drones. Drone workers are longer and wider than bees. Also, while the abdomen of the worker bee has a more tapered design, the shape of the drone is barrel-like.
Things we can do to save bees.
We, as humans, can do many things to help some bees survive and thrive. These are some of them.
Reduce the use of herbicides and pesticides. If you must use them, do so at night when the bees are not active.
Buy honey that is grown locally or produced in the USA, as there are reports that some imported honey may contain sugar from cane or corn.
Add alfalfa to the grass seed mixture. The nectar absorbed by the bees gives a distinctive flavor and color to the honey they produce. Try white clover, scarlet clover, sweet clover, or Alaic clover, all of which are unusual choices.
Buy bee-friendly plants (labeled as neonicotinoid-free).
Even if you live in an apartment that's only a few feet larger than your outdoor porch, plant something in the planter that will attract bees.
Build a beehive or bee hotel in your backyard.
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