Honey Makers

“Hello honey bunny”, a ringtone being popularised on television by a mobile company, is as sweet as honey but at the same time it is funny too. Honey is a tasty little treat by little insects who work together to live together.

Now, what insects are the honey makers? Bees, is the most common answer. But that is not true. Every bee does not make honey, only honey-bees make honey. And, there are certain ants, e.g., honey-ants and wasps, e.g., polistine wasps, which make honey. But only honey-bees make honey sufficient to be extracted for human use. Honey produced by honeybees is a good food rich in nutrients but honey produced by other insects can be toxic.

Such is the spirit of working as a team that these honey making--social insects visit scores of flowers to collect nectar and store them in their nests, that is after a certain period of time, processed into honey. The worker bees store honey to feed the larvae and keep it as a food reserve for the bee-colony for winters.

Honeybees live in a colony with a gradation of labour. Every member living in the colony has a specific and an important role to play. Queen is both the heart and sole of the colony. She builds the colony and is the only fertile female. Other females in the colony are sterile.  Generally, she is the mother of the colony and her job is to lay eggs and keep the colony together by secreting pheromone.

Pheromones are chemicals that sensitize the sense of smell of other insects of the same colony; secreted to attract males called drones, and to keep other females in the colony infertile. The fellows in the colony recognize this distinct smell of their colony and keep on working together. The workers make the nest, defend the nest from predators and take care of the brood or the larvae that will mature into adults. 

Drones’ or the males’ only job is to fertilize the queen’s eggs. Eggs, that are fertilized become females, and that are left unfertilized develop into males or drones. Drones don’t have stingers unlike workers in the colony. The stringers in the bodies of the workers are actually modified ovipositors, or organs to deposit pollen and are barbed. Whenever a worker is threatened, she stings her stinger into the victim and tears off her abdomen in the process to pull it out, and dies.

Honey bees, popularly called as ‘Madhu-makhi’ is not a makhi or a fly, in fact. As, bees have two wings on the either side of their bodies unlike flies that have only one. Wasps like bees have two wings on either side of their bodies. Wasps and bees appear to be similar. But it is easy to identify them. Wasps have elongated bodies and slim waists and bees have hairy bodies.

The honeybees are pollinators actually. They visit flowers to suck nectar and in the meantime transfer pollen grains from one flower to another, like butterflies (titlee) and bumble-bees (bhanwara). The sterile females or worker bees store pollen and nectar in their nest or beehive. 

The cells in the bee-hive is made up of bees’ wax, unlike the nests of other social insects like hornets, paper-wasps, yellow jackets and ants that are made up of processed wood pulp or mud. Inside honeycombs or cells specified to store honey in the hive, nectar is stored and transformed into honey by the action of certain enzymes.

The amount of honey stored in the cells of the beehive is significant to be extracted for human use. Apart from making honey they also secrete ‘royal jelly’ from specific glands in their bodies which are fed to larvae in their initial days. A virgin queen feeding on the royal jelly after certain days develops to be the queen.

When the colony has two queens, either of the two leaves the hive with some members of the colony to establish the colony in a different place. The quest for a new suitable place is carried out by the workers in different directions which report to the queen at a certain place and justify the place by communicating through a dancing gesture called ‘waggle dance’. When the enthusiastic bee manages to convince her fellows, the beehive is established on the spot that she suggested.

Honeypot ants are unique insects as they store liquids in their bodies. When food is scarce, they regurgitate the liquid stored, after their antennae being stroked by the worker ants.

The honey making bees are reared to extract honey. Beekeeping or the rearing of bees to obtain a produce of honey is called apiculture. Apiculture is carried out in an apiary or a place where beehives are kept. Handling honeybee colonies can be difficult as the workers bees by habit defend their hives and sting but for the sweetness and profit that beekeeping yields, the vocation is carried out.