Save the Bees Please
We have all had some sort of experience with bees. Many of us have been stung by bee and may have some valid fear surrounding them. However, bees are often put in a bad light. What many of us may not realize is that the that human race is dependent upon honey bees. These amazing creatures are the reason that we have food to eat on our tables each day.
A bee hive is an amazing super-organism!
The hive itself consists of 50-60 thousand bees and all together work like a machine! A perfect society that works for the benefit of the hive. A bee will never do something to harm the hive, it exists for the greater good. This is something that human race should learn from bees.
Honey bees have been on the Earth since mankind can remember (even more, for about 10-20 million years). They are among the top pollinators of plants along with butterflies, dragonflies, wasps, and hummingbirds.
Albert Einstein said that human kind would have only 4 years to live if the honey bees would completely disappear. And this is why the life of bees is imperative on our planet.
Right now we are experiencing an alarming decline in bee population. The main reason for this is environmental pollution caused by humans. We have polluted and contaminated the air with toxic fumes, poisoned the waters with heavy metals, toxic debris and depleted and polluted the soil with our modern, non-soluble garbage, fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides. We must do our best to change the way we operate so that we can protect our mother earth.
You may be wondering why these little creatures are so important.
Thirty percent of the food we eat is due to the pollination of bees. Without them, we would have no fruits, vegetables, or nuts. Every plant that makes a flower needs to be pollinated and honey bees are the main pollinators.
A honey bee is a small insect, the only insect that is bacteria and virus free and the only creature on the planet that produces more that it consumes. They are always in the process of creating honey, wax, and propolis.
Not all of the bees in the hive are the same. We mostly see the foraging bees, those that are at the end of their life cycle these bees forage for honey and pollen till their life ends.
One bee collects 1/8 of a teaspoon of honey in her life which is 4-8 weeks, flies 15 miles/hour and visits 50-100 flowers in one trip. To make a pound of honey, bees have to fly 55.000 miles and visit 2 million flowers!
Besides foraging bees there are bees that take turns in various tasks in and around the bee hive.
There are guards that protest the hive from intruders, scouts that look for new resources of food and locations to establish a new hive. Janitors that clean and sterilize the hive, nursing bees that feed the larvae, young bees that clean the queen bee. Inside the hive, workers build honey comb and store the food, drones have only one purpose, to mate with the young queen. The queen bee is “the life” of the hive.
Every bee takes turns to complete all these tasks, from the day she is born until the end of her life cycle, everything is for the good of the queen. How these amazing creatures choose to play these various roles, and the way they operate and communicate as one unit with each other is still a mystery.
They use different types of communication such as buzzing and dancing, Bees wiggle their tails, flap wings, transfer telepathically necessary information and use their pheromones to communicate and indicate what needs to be done.
One bee may not have a great deal of power, but put 50000 thousand bees together and you get what scientists and biologists call a super-organism. A unity that works for the benefit of all and can frighten even the biggest creature.
Many people are scared of bees but few know that a bee will never sting if not threatened or stepped on. A bee dies when she stings and that is because her digestive apparatus is connected to the stinger. And a sting of a bee is actually very healthy with except of those people that are allergic to a bee sting, which can be fatal. There are people that use bees for apitherapy, a method of treating certain conditions with bee stings that works similar to acupuncture. Beekeepers are known to be very healthy and long lived due to the fact they get stung but also they consume honey bee products on regular basis.
So what do bees produce?
Everyone knows about honey. But, bees make pollen (the only natural food that contains 99% of what human body needs, you could survive on just eating pollen), bees wax and propolis.
To make 1 pound of wax, bees consume 15-20 lbs of honey and they use their glands to make the honeycomb. They build hexagonal forms that have walls that can support 25 times its weight.
Honey is very nutritious, has good enzymes and it is the healthiest sweetener. Honey can be used to sterilize the wounds as microbes cannot live in it! Honey will never spoil, even if you keep it for thousand years. It’s natural property is to crystalize in time and if you have honey that stays liquid forever that means that the honey was heated. The processed honey often sold in stores, eliminates the crystallization properties but with this procedure honey loses all of it’s nutritional value and good enzymes are killed. That is why you need to get your honey from a reputable and trusting source.
Wax can be chewed and even eaten as it contains natural antibiotics and it is good for digestion.
Beeswax is used in cosmetics and skin care products because it provides a protection against irritants while still allowing skin to breathe. It also offers anti-inflammatory, antibacterial and antiviral benefits making it helpful in treating skin irritations.
Wax can be used for making the most natural and healthiest candles. It often used in cosmetics, cleaning products, as a protection for cheese, and the list goes on and on.
Propolis is another bee product, which is made from tree sap and resin from pine trees and other cone-producing evergreen trees collected by bees. Combined with their saliva, wax flakes and pollen bees use propolis to seal all the cracks, patch holes and build panels in the hive. This protects the hive from all the pathogens outside. Due to presence of propolis the hive is the most sterile environment!
Propolis is known for its medicinal properties in treating different conditions like: burns, wounds, infections, gum disease and cavities, respiratory infections, parasites and for treating many types of cancer. Propolis is also an immune system booster and energizer.
Last but not least, bees make a milky like product called Royal Jelly which is food for newborn bees and for feeding the queen bee. A queen bee is not born but is chosen to be made a queen bee. She is only fed on royal jelly her entire life, and that is the reason that she lives 4-6 years (in comparison to a 4-6 weeks bee life). Royal jelly is the only known and proven substance to prolong life.
You may find yourself asking how such a small creature as a honey bee can be so perfect and efficient? The answer is simple- bees live in balance and harmony with the surrounding environment and they work together! We as humans, the most evolved creature on this planet, need to learn to live in peace, work together for the common good and come to the realization that we are also one super organism! May we all continue to learn about the bees, as well as from the bees, and do our best to ensure their vitality on this planet!
Thank you D.G. for your help with this article!