Spring has Sprung!
It is that time of the year when the days are getting longer and the sun beats more warmly on our backs. It’s the time when trees begin their budding and the buzzing of bees and the singing of birds fills the air. There is a freshness in the air, the weather is more changeable with calm, blue sky days regularly interrupted by vigorous weather changes with wind and showers of rain.
In the high country the snow begins to melt and streams flow with sparkling, cold water which flows into bigger streams and our reservoirs begin filling. The home gardener begins turning the sods of soil preparing the ground for planting some vegetables and flowers and people on the land note that pasture and crops begin growing with renewed vigour.
It was the blue skies, budding of a fruit tree and buzzing of bees that got my attention just the other day. We have been hearing how world bee numbers have decreased rapidly in some countries because of disease so it was reassuring to hear the buzzing of countless bees around the budding plum tree. It was Professor Stuart Burgess, visiting lecturer and engineer from Bristol University, England who asked 250 of us at a seminar, “How many visits to flowers by honeybees to collect nectar are needed to make 450 grams of honey?” Answers from the audience ranged from several hundred to several thousand. Professor Burgess told us around two million visits are needed! Amazing. No wonder the bee is so busy!
Now a little about the life of the bee. Imagine that you are a honeybee. You leave your hive one fine autumn morning – your wings are flapping at 200 times per second and your cruising speed is 25 km per hour and suddenly you notice a patch of flowers. You have found a new nectar supply for your hive – flowers in a front yard. Twenty thousand bees in your colony are trying to build up food supplies for the coming season. So you fill your special pouch with nectar and fly the 500 metres back to your hive. Up to this point none of the other bees in your home hive know about this exciting find which you have made. How do you communicate this good news to the other bees so they too can access this food source?
The world owes much to the pioneering work of the Austrian scientist Dr Karl von Frisch as far as understanding the communication skills of the bee is concerned. He spent over 25 years performing countless observations discovering much fascinating information. In fact he won the Nobel prize for Physiology in 1973 for his work. Dr Frisch discovered that to communicate the location of a food source too distant from the hive to be smelled or seen by the other bees, the scout bee uses the “language of the bees”. This involves performing a complex figure eight dance. The dance waggle direction done in relation to the position of the sun communicates very clearly to other bees all details they need as far as direction is concerned and intensity of the waggle determines the distance. Bees travel with minimum fuel load to a nectar collection spot so that they can have maximum payload on the return flight. Occasionally you see a bee struggling along the ground. It has probably run out of fuel and is grounded. Let it sip some sugared water from an eye droplet and it may well be able to fly again!
When we consider the complexity of the honey bee “figure eight dance” and the detailed information conveyed to observing honey bees, we can see incredibly complex design. Professor Stuart Burgess says, “The staggering complexity of honeybee behaviour shows the mind of an engineering genius behind such skills which involve sophisticated communication and mapping systems. Truly we should give God the glory and exclaim ‘O Lord, how great are Your works! Your thoughts are very deep’ Psalm 92:5.
We need to be grateful for the amazing achievements of the hard working bees. Researchers tell us it takes approximately 556 worker bees visiting 2 million flowers to produce 450 grams of honey. One teaspoon full of honey is the lifetime work of 14 bees! Enjoy your honey! Be grateful our Creator has endowed us with many blessings – the honey bee is one of them.
Bruce Stewart.