Honey Bees Case Study

Ah Christmas/Winter. The time of the year marked by the sound of joyous carols , cheerful talk of holiday plans, skating, candy canes, turkeys, family dinners, christmas sale signs plastered in front of almost every store, jesus coming down from the heavens, crappy nativity art and the general feeling of togetherness. But also as not being recognized by most people the one time of year when bee colonies are suppose to begin to healthily dwindle in numbers. As part of of an healthy ecological cycle, many wild & domesticated bee populations decline a bit in number during the winter season only to revive themselves later in the spring/summer, but that hasn’t been the case for many years. Ever since 1998 beekeepers have noticed significant drops in bee populations, throughout all seasons. In 2011, Canada saw

It was a normal, peaceful Wednesday morning in Tuscon, Arizona. Four landscapers were called to tend to a yard for a ninety-year-old man. One of them turned on his lawnmower. Almost immediately, the vibration of its engine had disturbed an enormous hive of approximately 800,000 Africanized bees nearby. The noises appeared to be a threat to the colony. As a result, thousands of them swarmed the men, injected their venom, and clogged their orifices up, such as their ears and nostrils. There were so many bees that one of the first responders had described the sky getting dark from the flock, although it was sunny out. From this attack, one man died and another received one hundred stings. This one of the many examples

There are three types of bees in a hive; namely, the queen, worker bees and drones. There is only one queen per hive and her role is to produce more bees (4). This is done by mating with the male bees. After mating, the queen can lay up to 2,000 eggs per day (4). Drones are male bees and their role is to mate with the queen. Drones spend a considerable amount of time inside the hive; in addition, during early winter

In centuries, the honey bee has a very important role in our agriculture. According to Watanabe, Honey bee approximately benefits $10 billion of crops, including almonds, apples, and alfalfa every year in the United State (Pollination Worries rise As Honey Bees Decline, 1170). In addition, The National Agriculture Statistics Service (NASS) had estimated 2660 million honey producing colonies in 2015 (2017). Based on honey bees’ behavior, they can expand nearly all habitable corners of the globe which made them highly adaptable species (Dennis, 80). With adaptable capability and high productivity, our beekeepers can able to maintain their life

That new worker bee will spit the substance to another bee. While this process continues, the substance collects more enzymes as it goes from worker bee to worker bee. Once the new enzyme filled substances makes it to the construction zone, a worker bee will spit the honey onto the desired place, and start to secrete the substance with her wax gland. In total, bees consume over eight pounds of honey to create one pound of wax. This process of regurgitation and secretion goes on hundreds of times to create hundreds of hexagonal combs. Bees use hexagons because they have the least amount of perimeter and they also perfectly fit together on one another. When they make one comb, they also start on the other six combs at the same time. If they were to use a triangle or a square, they only make three or four borders, making it less efficient. The less the worker bees have to make the more nectar and pollen they can

The decline in a variety of bee populations on a global scale has been obvious since the 1990s and scientists have been struggling with what is actually causing this decline. Current studies show that the use of systemic pesticides, specifically neonicotinoids, has been causing the number of bees to decrease rapidly. There are currently seven different types of neonicotinoids used in the agricultural industry today including imidacloprid, clothianidin, acetamiprid, thiamethoxam, thiacloprid, dinotefuran, and nithiazine. Each of these neonicotinoids are currently being studied and the most commonly used neonicotinoid today is imidacloprid.

As the Belgian writer Maurice Maeterlinck once said: ‘‘If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.’’ The abovementioned quote that was used by the famous astrophysicist Albert Einstein many years later proves that the importance of honeybees in our ecosystems is a known fact since the beginning of the 20th Century. It has been 15 years that the worldwide bee population’s decline, the colony collapse disorder (CCD), is at an alarming rate, which concerns the whole scientific domain. Many companies, environmentalist groups and

A juicy apple. Pumpkin pie. Crisp almonds. Tangy oranges and grapefruit. None of these foods would survive without the hard work of honeybees. Unfortunately, in the last two years, United States beekeepers reported a loss of over 44% of honeybee colonies. Similarly, Europe has experienced a 25% loss and the United Kingdom has experienced a 45% loss. These numbers are staggering. What is causing this sharp decrease in the honey bee population? What are the long term impacts of a declining honey bee population? These questions must be explored because, like Albert Camus’ absurd hero, Sisyphus, and J. Howard Miller’s iconic hero, Rosie the Riveter, honeybees are vigilant in their tiring, though inspired, efforts toward a particular goal—in this

Honeybees are considered a keystone species because of the extremely important role they play in supporting and pollinating a large variety of ecosystems. Human beings are also reliant on the services that honeybees provide, and often use them in commercial greenhouses and orchards to ensure proper pollination. Although much research has been done to try and discover the cause of the dying bees, no single factor has been determined. However, if the problem remains unsolved, it could lead to disastrous economic an ecological changes.

The sun shimmered brightly in the morning sky, sending rays of warmth on to the land below it. Birds started to chirp and the bees started to buzz. The bees began their work in the golden, honey-filled hive. Most of them flew out, wandering around looking for blooming flowers, to get sweet nectar. Other bees nursed the young, took part in the building the impressive hive piece by piece, or guarded their home. Everyday, the bees are making their colony stronger...but what does this mean? Each bee has a significant role in the hive, and a bee does its job so every bee in the hive survives. In other words, a beehive would not exist if the bees did not work together as a whole. The way a community of bees works is not only fascinating, but also similar to the human world. Sue Monk Kidd incorporates various concepts in The Secret Life of Bees, and uses bees to develop the significance of those concepts. Kidd makes connections between bees and how they represent

For just one to ten queen bees will cost about thirty-two dollars but if you buy hundred queen bees or more it only cost twenty-five dollars. Bees can fly up to eight miles from their nest in search of food. In a worker bee's lifetime they will travel about one thousand kilometers ( six-hundred twenty miles). Bees are all female and they do all the work for the hive. Workers perform the following tasks inside the hive as a House Bee: Cleaning, feeding the baby bees, feeding and taking care of the queen, packing pollen and nectar into cells, capping cells, building and repairing honeycombs, fanning to cool the hive and guarding the hive. Bees have straw-like tongues called a proboscis so they can suck up liquids and also mandibles so they can chew.The average life of a honey bee during the working season is about three to six weeks. There are five products that come from the hive: Honey, beeswax, pollen, propolis, and royal jelly. Royal jelly is a honey bee secretion that is used in the nutrition of larvae as well as adult queens. Propolis is a resinous mixture that honey bees produce by mixing saliva and beeswax with exudate gathered from tree buds, sap flows, or other

We know that European honey bee is subject to diseases, parasites, and predators coming from Asia and Africa and it is unable to control it by itself. In these cases, the beekeeper developed a sort of symbiosis with the bees, taking some products and in return ensuring the survival of the colonies, controlling diseases, parasitic infestations, and providing nourishment during bad seasons where there is

Most honey bee colonies are commercialized, which means they are grown on farms. The farmed bee colonies are then loaded on trucks and shipped all over the country to pollinate crops. This processed is used all over the world. To put it into scale a single semi-truck carries 400 bee colonies each containing 30,000 to 50,000 bees with a grand total of about 3.5 million bees (Kraus, 2013). After shipping the bees are unloaded from trucks and placed along grid lines

Honeybees are social insects that live in eusocial communities in which the bees partake in complex activities and live in well-organized groups. There are three types of bees that exist within the hive: the queen, the drone, and the worker. Each colony has one queen bee, whose primary function is reproduction. She also produces pheremones which represses the ovarian development in the worker bees which unifies the colony and maintains her position as queen, until a new one takes over. Drones are the male bees of the colony, and their sole purpose within the hive is for reproduction. Worker bees perform all of the duties to maintain the hive, including building cells, care for and feed the young, care for the queen, handle nectar to produce honey, and guard the

ALL OF HUMANITY as complex and fragile as it is STANDS ON VARIOUS PILLARS. ONE OF THEM HAPPENS TO BE THE HONEYBEE. 1/3 MEALS THAT YOU eat everyday IS MADE POSSIBLE BY BEES. THEY ARE SO IMPORTANT THAT IF THEY WERE TO DIE OUT THOUSANDS OF PLANTS (because they pollinate if you didn't know that) WOULD FOLLOW, WHICH WOULD EVENTUALLY LEAD TO OUR STARVATION AS LIVESTOCK WOULDNT HAVE ANY FOOD UNABLE TO PROVIDE FOR OUR MILK AND MEAT. THEY ALSO HAVE A HUGE ECONOMIC IMPACT BRINGING IN 100S OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS BY THE PLANTS