tonight's b(l)ee(g)

dinner was a one hand on the wheel and the other one strangling a fish taco from the local taco joint around the corner from my place of employment. yes, fast food BUT not from a chain. and when i got home, i discovered the most heinous thing - a smashed black frijoles attached to the seat of my pantalones. can you imagine!!

the real enjoyment of the evening took place back at the nature center (yes more frogs were heard in the parking lot! and cookies at intermission! and more stuffed dead animals) during the beginner's beekeeping course. tonight's lecture was on bee biology, followed by some beginner's information.

we got to watch an awesome film - it was from the 1970s! It was originally on 16mm film! Do you feel the enthusiasm for nature films in their original format?? However, "The Life of the Honeybee," had been digitized - still, it had that reminiscent feel of high school and a darkened classroom of drowsy teens; but this film was really, and i mean REALLY good!!

The basic bee bio thing you need to know: the 3 types of bees -
1. The Queen lives for 3-4 years and whose sole purpose is to lay eggs.
2. The Drones are the males and will live in the hive for about a year (then they are driven out by the females - WOOHOO! - at the end of Autumn when food becomes scarce. Say goodbye to the free ride buddy!), they do not have a stinger, and their sole purpose is to mate with the Queen.
3. The Workers are the females and they do everything (protection, feeding, building, foraging, etc) except mate. They live for 6 weeks - they work themselves to death.

here are 3 of my most favorite neat bee-bio things:

• when a bee returns to the hive with an abdomen (key insect word) full of nectar, SHE (the females do ALL the work) does a little wiggle dance to show the others where to find some of the sweet stuff
• bees control the population of their hive by swarming. did you know that? I did not. So the swarm, made up an ousted Queen and her workers (all females), will leave a hive and search for a new one. Actually, the workers will cover the queen to keep her safe while others go looking for a new spot. They come back and do wiggle dances to describe where their spot is located and then, by consensus (how, i don't know), they decide on where to go. Usually this happens when a new Queen is born. 
• worker bees (the females) make wax from glands on their abdomen and then use the wax to build the perfectly hexagonal cells in different sizes for all sorts of uses from rearing young, to storing nectar, honey, etc. But, I think i might have written about that last week, so here is another one - PHEROMONES! the queen gives off a pheromone to attract the workers to her beck and call as well as to attract males to mate with AND when a worker bee stings (only the females sting), she emits a pheromone that puts the others in 'alarm mode'

and if you were wondering, the Chef's fave fact is that the sole purpose of the drone bee (the male) is to have sex with the queen. typical male.