Society in a Box

Humans have been keeping honeybees for thousands of years, yet the insects still manage to surprise us. Lost in the debate over what is causing the death of bees is how intricately complex their lives are, from the tiniest brood to the virgin queen. After all, what other invertebrate communicates by dance?

THE ANATOMY

Things you may not know about Apis mellifera

ELECTROSTATIC CHARGE

A charge on the bee’s hair attracts pollen.

THE PROBOSCIS

The airtight, strawlike tube sucks up nectar and also works in reverse to feed offspring from a honey stomach.

MANDIBLE

The jaws help bite and pack pollen as well as shape wax for building honeycomb.

EYES

Bees have five of them–two large compound eyes and three ocelli used to detect light intensity. A worker’s eyes have nearly 7,000 lenses.

WING HOOKS

Hooks enable the bee to attach one of each set of wings together during flight for maximum efficiency.

LEGS

Brushes scrape pollen from front to back, where it collects in the pollen basket, a sac attached to the rear leg.

WAX PLATES

Bees secrete wax beneath plates on their abdomen and use it to build honeycomb.

WINGS

A bee has two sets of wings. Rapid flapping generates warmth and evaporates water from nectar to make honey.

HONEY STOMACH

A second reservoir where nectar is temporarily stored before being regurgitated.

STING

When a bee stings, a barb prevents the stinger from being pulled out; the bee then tears its abdomen while freeing itself before dying.

VENOM

The unique mixture of chemicals that causes a sting to hurt may play a role in stopping the spread of HIV, which venom has been shown to destroy.

• The oldest known honeybee specimen dates from 100 million years ago.

• The 17th century naturalist Jan Swammerdam discovered that the king bee had ovaries and was, in fact, a queen.

• In 1923 scientist Rudolf Steiner predicted that within 100 years artificial cultivation of honeybees would have severe consequences on the bee population.

THE BASICS

Actual size, 0.4–0.6 in. (5–15 mm)

DUTIES

WORKER

Construction, storage, keeping the nursery, guarding, caretaking, scouting and foraging.

DRONE

Mates with a virgin queen in midair. Can fly backward, rotate and flip.

QUEEN

Lays up to 1,500 eggs a day, possibly more. Secretes pheromones to control workers.

LIFE SPAN

20–30 days

Dies after mating

3–7 years

THE BREEDS

There are 20,000 species of bees worldwide, but only six main types are kept commercially:

ITALIAN

RUSSIAN

CARNIOLAN

CAUCASIAN

GERMAN

BUCKFAST

1/12 TEASPOON

Amount of honey a worker bee will produce during its short life

$15 billion

Estimated annual amount by which bee pollination increases crop value

In a single trip, a worker bee can visit up to 100 flowers and carry more than half its weight in pollen

In order to produce 1 lb. (0.4 kg) of honey, hive workers fly a collective 55,000 miles (89,000 km)

and tap 2,000,000 flowers

THE HIVE

A colony typically comprises 20,000 to 30,000 bees. Although it has long been believed that bees hibernate in the winter, the colony creates a winter ecosystem inside the hive and lives off honey, with the bees maintaining warmth by working their wings. Middle-aged worker bees build by attaching each comb to the walls of the hive–a process that often requires more than 2 lb. (1 kg) of wax.

THE DANCE

When a scout worker has successfully located food, it alerts its fellow foragers about the food’s location with a series of dance moves. Through the number of turns, the duration of the dance and the moves themselves, the scout can communicate the distance to the food, the angle of the food to the sun and whether it is near or far.

SUN

The scout dances in a figure-eight shape to tell other workers to fly toward the sun. The number of dance patterns in a given time indicates distance.

SUN

The angle at which the scout dances gives the angle of the food source relative to the hive and the sun.

FOOD

HIVE

NEARBY ROUND DANCE

60°

FOOD

HIVE

THE FUTURE

THE ROBOBEE

Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences conducted the first successful flight of a life-size robotic fly in 2007. The lab has received $10 million in grant money from the National Science Foundation to build a network of autonomous artificial bees.

ARTIFICIAL MUSCLES CAN BEAT WINGS 120 TIMES PER SECOND

AIRFOILS ROTATE INDEPENDENTLY

WEIGHS 80 MG

APPLICATIONS

• SEARCH AND RESCUE

• ARTIFICIAL POLLINATION

• COVERT SURVEILLANCE

• HIGH-RESOLUTION WEATHER AND CLIMATE MAPPING

• TRAFFIC MONITORING

Sources: Washington University School of Medicine; PBS; USDA; Roger A. Morse and Nicholas W. Calderone, Cornell University; Bee/Rose-Lynn Fisher; National Geographic; Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences; Encyclopaedia Britannica; Bees/Lectures by Rudolf Steiner; North Carolina State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign