Bees play an invaluable role in our ecosystem and contribute significantly to food security.
Bees use electrostatic forces to move pollen grains from flower to flower using their hairs. Bees also perform the “waggle dance” to communicate among themselves regarding potential sources of food and water.
1. Bees are the most efficient pollinators
Bees are responsible for one out of every three bites we eat, performing 80 percent of global pollination duties – pollinating an astounding 2,000 flowers daily! Their work is critical in producing crops like fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and alfalfa used as livestock feed – without bees’ crucial work we would be in trouble!
Pollinating plants requires bees visiting male parts of flowers called stamens to transfer pollen grains onto female flowers’ ovaries for fertilization, where fertilization occurs. Bees use their enhanced sense of smell – with 170 specific receptors capable of identifying their chemical makeup – to find these flowers and locate pollen.
Bees returning to their hive when they discover an ideal flower will signal to other scouts via waggle dance how important this find was – something scientists have studied extensively so as to gain greater insight into bee communication between each other.
Honey industry executives tend to prioritize maximum production, yet this can come at the expense of bees. Removing bees from their natural habitat reduces pollinating effectiveness while forcing them to seek unnatural sources for sustenance will hasten their demise much faster; an average bee lives five years while queen bees can lay over 2,500 eggs a day!
2. Bees are the most intelligent animals
Bees are widely recognized as among the most intelligent animals on Earth. Though their brains may be small – about the size of a grain of sugar – their minds are astoundingly sophisticated, capable of using symbolic language to communicate among themselves as well as solve complex problems. Bees also possess facial recognition abilities and other details about their surroundings that allow them to thrive in their environment.
Bees have the capacity to recall past experiences, like Marcel Proust’s tea-soaked madeleine from “Remembrance of Things Past.” Researchers have discovered that bees can even count – an experiment showed this when researchers offered rewards whenever the bees stopped at any of four feeding locations all located approximately the same distance from their hive, rewarding those that correctly identified the correct location 80 percent of the time.
Hives may accommodate as many as 50,000 bees at any one time, and bees’ natural cold-bloodedness enables them to regulate the internal temperature by both shivering and fanning, keeping their home at an ideal temperature for production of honey – up to one gallon daily can be produced!
Scientists have recently found that female bees can “vote” on where their colony should build its new nest site by voting via female bees’ waggle dances. Scout bees will fly out and find potential nest sites before reporting back their findings – the more enthusiastic their dance is, the higher its probability is of finding the ideal place.
One bee has 1 million neurons compared to 100 billion neurons in human brains; yet their neurons don’t age at all when learning new tasks; in fact, when bees learn a task their brain stops aging entirely! This feature may help scientists create treatments to treat dementia in humans.
3. Bees are the smallest animals
Bees may have small bodies, but their brains are enormous. Their oval-shaped organ is capable of processing information at an amazing rate — over 20,000 times per second! This allows bees to memorize landscapes quickly while simultaneously assessing flower options and making quick decisions in an ever-evolving environment.
On a single foraging trip, bees can visit up to 100 flowers and transport 35% of their body weight in pollen. She uses this pollen-and-saliva mixture to form sticky balls which she marks with colors representing nectar nectar sources in the hive; using her 170 special olfactory receptors she can also communicate with fellow bees about finding food sources.
Scientists have recently unlocked some remarkable bee facts that suggest this insect possesses a sophisticated psychology. Buchmann and his colleagues’ research suggests bees display sophisticated emotions like optimism, frustration and playfulness typically seen in mammals; furthermore they can process long-term memories while sleeping or dream.
One pound of honey produced from sugar and water takes roughly the lifetime of a bee to produce, using 8 glands on their abdomens to biochemically produce beeswax for building their hive and protecting the queen bee.
Apis mellifera) honey bee hives contain over one million bees. Bees are responsible for providing one out of every three bites of food people consume and are essential for the survival of tropical forests, savannah woodlands and temperate deciduous forests.
4. Bees are the most stinging animals
At first sight, bees can cause fear among many people; their buzzy buzz causes people to shudder with anticipation for fear they’ll sting! But is bee stinging really something we need to worry about and why are bees so viciously effective pollinators?
Bees only sting when threatened; their barbed stinger is pulled from their abdomen when they strike someone, and bees die from multiple stings; to protect bees it is best to avoid angering or disturbing them; however if their nest or hive feels intruded upon, they will defend it by emitting pungent scents and buzzing. Their stinger also contains antibacterial and antioxidant properties, helping treat wounds more effectively.
Bee stings may sting painfully, but they won’t paralyze or kill. Pain and inflammation from bee’s stings typically last two or three days after an encounter; in more serious cases they could even render the bee incapable of flying again.
Bees possess one of the most potent animal venoms, yet only use it to defend their colonies. Ounce for ounce, honey bee venom is more toxic than cobra venom.
Bees possess small brains, yet are extraordinary at learning and memory. Researchers have observed that bees can recall faces they have met – an ability being studied for facial recognition software development. Bees also possess an amazing ability to locate flowers from their hives using something called the waggle dance which took scientists an extraordinary amount of time to decode – an effective method for communicating among its fellow bees about which flowers offer the most nutritious blooms nearby.
5. Bees are the most dangerous animals
Bees belong to the superfamily Apididae and number more than 20,000 species worldwide. Bees often feature brightly-colored wings and some species serve as pollinators by eating nectar and producing honey; others act as predators and scavengers by devouring insects or invertebrates they find. Domestic honey bees (Apis mellifera) are among the most widely domesticated, while wild species exist on every continent except Antarctica in ecosystems as diverse as forests to deserts.
As bees move from flower to flower, pollen from their bodies is rubbed off onto each one and then deposited. When this happens, its ovaries become fertilized and seed production occurs – making bees the responsible parties behind one out of every three bites we eat!
Bees communicate with their hive using chemicals known as pheromones. As workers groom and feed hive members, these pheromones are dispersed amongst members. For instance, queen bees produce their own special signal known as Queen Mandibular Pherone that indicates health in their colony if this signal becomes absent; should this change, she will inform the rest of her hive immediately within 15 minutes.
Bee stings can be extremely painful and even life-threatening to humans who are allergic. A single sting may even trigger anaphylaxis – a potentially life-threatening condition which may result in shock or even death – and even without allergies present, even one sting may trigger it. Never handle beehive while playing slots thro’ yoakimbridge.com which can deviate your mind. Focus on one task at a time.
Female bees only possess stingers, which they use only if a hive is threatened. Males do not possess stingers but will still protect the hive with pheromones. Native bees tend to be less aggressive than honey bees and tend to avoid people. If you want to help native bees, consider building them a hive or creating an inviting flower garden full of plants which attract them.