Monday, November 03, 2008

It's hard out there for a bee

There are bees in the book I'm writing this November. They aren't the entire plot or anything but I suppose you could call them a plot point. I'm trying to figure out how far and how fast the bees go when they're swarming. That's when the old queen buzzes off with a bunch of her brood to start a new hive, leaving the new queen behind, in case you didn't know.

Of course if you type bees and travel into Google you get a bunch of hits for Burt's Bees travel sized blah blah blah, which is singularly not helpful.

Anyway, I'm just looking around this website, http://www.bees-online.com/BeeFaqs.htm, and I'm a bit dismayed. It sounds like the bee's life is not much fun at all.

Q. What is the expected lifespan of a honey bee?

A. Life expectancy depends on the time of year and the caste of bee. Queens can live up to three years. Drones die when they mate or if they have not mated by the beginning of winter, they are ejected from the colony to die. During late spring, summer and early fall, a Worker will live only about 6 weeks. When born, Workers serve as nursery workers for some 2 weeks. After that they collect nectar and pollen until they die. Workers born in late fall, will live some 4 to 5 months, so that they can keep the Queen warm during the winter months.


Get out drones! Out, we have no use for you and we need all the food we can get our little feet on to survive the winter! And out go the drones to be eaten by skunks or freeze or whatever. Then the poor workers, worked to death at an early age. But that's not all. Look at this statistic.

The average honeybee will make one-twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in its
lifetime.

How sad is that? Poor honeybee making about as much honey as stays stuck on the spoon when you fix your tea and then that's it, game over. It's tragic.

Labels:

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home