365 Urban Species. #194: Honeybee

[urbpan]

Photos by cottonmanifesto. Location: On a volunteer milkweed plant in a garden in Olmsted Park.

Urban species #194: Honeybee Apis mellifera

No other insect has had as significant and positive interaction with humans as the honeybee. This animal is thought to be native to Europe, North Africa, and western Asia. Now it is found on all continents except Antarctica, in both cultivated and wild forms. Like pigeons, bees are provided with homes without fences, cages with open doors. They are free to roam, and frequently new colonies are established in the wild. The bees must find a hollow tree, or similar substitute, which in the city is often a space within the walls of a building. Specialized exterminator businesses exist to remove bees and their hives (usually keeping the honey) from urban settings.

Honeybees are social insects, forming colonies with thousands of individuals. The honeybees seen gathering nectar from flowers are sterile female workers. They produce honey to provide a year round source of food for their developing larvae. The tremendous amount of sugar (a difficult commodity to come by in ancient times) honeybees produce is just the most obvious and immediate importance they have. Far more important is their service as pollinators for crop foods and wild plants. Most good farms have hives on site to ensure that flowers become fruit, a process that is impossible in many cases without the bees. The cultural significance of honeybees in ancient times is reflected in the repeated association of honey with the gods. Today it's a term of endearment so prevalent, most of us who use it rarely even think of the literal meaning of "my honey."

Reportedly up to 40 people in the United States die from bee stings each year, but most of these are probably stings from yellow jackets and other wasps. Honey bees are relatively docile insects; this investigator has handled them in the field without incident. Experiments in Brazil to develop more productive honeybees have famously resulted in a strain of bees that are far more aggressive. "Africanized" or "killer" bees are those descendants of these honeybees that exhibit the behavioral traits of being more likely to sting an intruder and much more likely to pursue an intruder. These traits seem to be spreading northward from the original Brazilian population, making apiarists and apiphobes in North America quite nervous. Apparently, adding insult to injury, Africanized bees produce much less honey than other honeybees.

Comments

[ex-wellread.livejournal.com]

I was stung once by a bumblebee. Hurts like Hell.

[hummingwolf.livejournal.com]

From what I can recall, yellowjacket stings hurt a lot more at first than bee stings, but the last bee sting I got itched for weeks afterward.

You haven't done yellowjackets yet, have you? This house was invaded by a bunch of them one autumn. Fortunately, the weather was cool enough then that they were slow-moving, unaggressive, and easily smushed; so the time that one was crawling around underneath my shirt didn't end in any pain for me (though I did kill the wasp about as soon as I could run into the bathroom and tear my shirt off).

[csbermack.livejournal.com]

Are those the yellow-and-black striped ground wasps? We had a terrible experience with those bastards. And they die *stinger up*.

hatehatehate.

[ankhanu.livejournal.com]

Yellowjackets are classic paper wasps, but yeah, they're yellow and black.


I had a yellowjacket issue a couple autumns ago too. I found the best thing to do, as they were staying active in the house, was to use the vacuum cleaner to catch them. Because I'm mildly paranoid, after sucking them up, I closed off the vacuum tube with duct tape until I needed to suck more up :P

Plate o shrimp, again.

[ndozo.livejournal.com]

This is why I think this project would be a great newspaper column. This afternoon, walking the dog, I took a picture of a honeybee on a milkweed plant. The photo is not nearly as well composed, well exposed, or as clear as cottonmanifesto's, but there's the critter on the flower. My thought was to come home and see if I could identify the bee and the plant. But then you did it for me, with cool added info. And it's happened fairly often that within a day of seeing something new to me, you write about it. Nettles and cottonwood fluff are the two that come to mind immediately. So I hope you haven't given up on that idea.

[brush-rat.livejournal.com]

Yeah! It's Nyuki!

[ankhanu.livejournal.com]

Nice post.
I wonder if the sacs on the bees are pollen packets or if they're eggs of a parasite...

[iheartoothecae.livejournal.com]

Do you mean the yellow near the feet? I thought her feet looked a little odd.

[badnoodles.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure those are phoretic mites. The corbicula are only on the first segment of the hind tarsi.

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

yay! mystery (at least to me) solved!

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Can you elaborate a little on phoretic mites? A search turned up info mostly carrion beetle info.

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

http://insects.ummz.lsa.umich.edu/beemites/

[badnoodles.livejournal.com]

Phoresy is a term describing when a small, usually flightless arthropod hitches a ride on a larger arthropod, and it is very common. For many mites, it's their primary means of dispersal.

For example, Northern Fowl Mite Ornithonyssus sylviorarium will occasionally hitch a ride on the muscoid flies that populate manure. A house fly will land temporarily on the bird, and mite will latch on to a leg of the fly. The next time the fly lands on or around a suitable host for the mite, the mite will detach from the fly.

Most phoretic mites don't harm their steeds, except through increased energy costs associated with moving around carrying extra weight.

[harrietbrown.livejournal.com]

Love the bees! Got stung once, when I was working in the garden. I put my hand down on one. I felt the sting, and since the young nieces and nephews were about, I ran inside to the bathroom to take care of the wound. I was totally quiet running inside, but once I got to the bathroom I started screaming, "FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!!!" To the consternation of the family members in the garden below.

[bezigebij.livejournal.com]

:)
As you may have guessed, I love honey bees. If I ever have a substantial piece of property I will keep some hives again (it needs to be substantial because Dirk isn't quite as comfortable around bees as I am). I took a course on bee keeping in college and loved it.

[wakarusa.livejournal.com]

I know that you're looking for outlets with your writing - is cottonmanifesto doing the same for her photography? that is one of the most beautiful images I've ever seen (the top)

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

i'd love to but am not clear on how to go about doing such a thing

thanks for the compliment. :)

You really should!

[by-steph.livejournal.com]

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/5527/ins_and_outs_of_creating_and_selling.html

Re: You really should!

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

thanks for that. i read it and then urbpan mentioned that stock might not be the way to go since my pictures could end up being used by evil companies. I agreed that that would make me mighty sad. :(

Re: You really should!

[turil.livejournal.com]

I had luck sending a promotional sheet of my artwork to non-profits that I liked. I told them how much I supported their cause, too. I got a couple of offers for work that way, including one offer to do a cover of a book that ended up being done by Berkley Breathed (after I said that I had no way to take photos of non-zoo monkeys).

Re: You really should!

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

hey, now there's an idea. what did your promo sheet look like?

[nitroincognito.livejournal.com]

This seems a good a time as any to ask a really stupid question reagarding bees. Are honeybees the only bees to make honey -- (the name seems to imply that.)

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

That's not a stupid question.

Many social bee species make honey, but European honeybees are the most commonly "kept" bees. There are stingless honeybes that the indiginous Central Americans cultivated, and there seems to be another honeybee species in southeast Asia. I don't know about other bees found in north america (bumblebees for example). Social wasps provide animal food for their larvae.

[barn-swallow.livejournal.com]

So, I am not a fan of bees. Mostly because I don't like getting stung. But honeybees aren't too bad (yellow jackets are the devil), and in these pictures they are adorable! I have a picture of a whole bunch of them that you might like to see.

Have you ever done those ground bees/cicada killers? The really huge ones? They are pretty cool. Also, I have been seeing this tree around lately that looks like a locust (at least from far away) that has these pink pom-pom flowers. It looks tropical, I am really wondering what it is! I think I need to get a Field Guide to Trees from the library or something ;) But I am really tempted to get pictures of it and request it as an urban species!

[momomom.livejournal.com]

That tree is probably a mimosa.

[gemfyre.livejournal.com]

Feral honeybees are a big problem in Australia. They take over nesting hollows that would otherwise be used by native birds and mammals. And there's no easy way to get rid of them.