A Life of Bees: Angie, The Beehive And The Honey

"Paolina Paperina, a friend who lives in the pond next to the beehive, stops swimming, turns to me and beaks upwards and looks at me sarcastically. She and I always compete about everything, especially about who among us knows the most things, knows the most names of flowers, of animals, of distant countries... "Do you know what trofallassi is?" She shakes all her feathers, splashing some water on me, as if she has better things to think about, but then, proud as she is, she replies, "Yes, Angie, of course I do. But I won't tell you!". I fly off giggling. Rather than admit to being unprepared, she would jump underwater and never resurface. Whatever, let's not digress. Trophallaxis is the food exchange system that we bees implement to live. The nutrients introduced into the hive are passed from bee to bee, from mouth to mouth, so that the resources, whether few or many, are shared equally.

It is used by all social animals: each element of the colony is in tune with the others, thanks to the circulation between all of them of particular chemical substances, the pheromones: if one bee is hungry, it is because they are all hungry, and the stimuli to build new combs, to raise a new queen or to swarm are felt by all the members of the colony, in the same way. In short, we are the most supportive animals in creation! In fact, I have yet to get a pebble out of my paw. I did not swallow the fact that Woody, I mean Allen, preferred to lend his voice to an ant rather than a bee. Yes, I am talking about that cheap little film, Z the Ant, which made many of you humans believe that the only workers among insects were them, those small, black and frankly rather insignificant creatures, especially compared to us bees. All thinking that they were the symbol of a perfectly organised society. Tea. Nonsense!

Bees are the true managers of the animal world! My companions and I can make any company envious. We divide our tasks in a scientific manner and ensure the survival of us all, as well as your pleasure, with the exquisite honey we give you. Ours is a perfect team game. Let's assume that a jar of honey weighs 454 grams. A single bee can carry about 0.04 grams of nectar. But nectar is 40 per cent sugar, whereas honey needs 80 per cent sugar to be defined as such, so a bee carries about 0.02 grams of honey per trip. Are you good at maths? How many bees does it take to fill a 454 gram jar of honey? The answer is 454 divided by 0.02 grams, which means that a single jar of honey requires 22,700 bees.

Of course, a single colony of bees does not produce a single jar of honey. If it is very active, a colony is theoretically capable of creating more than 100kg of honey, more than a quintal! However, our beekeeper does not collect that much, because the hive does not store all the honey, but also uses it continuously as 'fuel', especially to keep the nest warm. So, there are times when he finds around 10-20 kilos of honey in the hive. However, I would say that the cost-benefit ratio, if we bees enjoy good health and if you don't keep making us sick with pesticides, is definitely in the black.

I challenge you to find an industry of humans that works so hard! Consider that every morning we make a kind of list of tasks. Here they are: 1) cleaning the hive and frames, feeding the brood 2) assisting the queen 3) orientation flights 4) honeycomb construction 5) hive ventilation 6) transformation of nectar into honey and honey storage 7) protection of the hive. I bet your head is spinning, eh! Each of us, in a way, provides food for the whole family. It is the foraging bees that come out of the hive to look for nectar, honeydew, pollen, but also water to cool the inside of the hive when it gets too hot, and resin, from which we produce propolis, which serves as a building material and sanitiser.

The forager bees bring nectar into the hive and transfer it to the stock bees, which expose it to the air moved by the fan bees. This is done in order to reduce the moisture content of the nectar and to increase the sugar concentration. The time required for the transformation of nectar into honey depends on its moisture content. A completely full frame, even if well ventilated, can take up to 36 days to mature. Sweeper bees take care of cleaning the cells and also take away the deceased mates, peace be upon them. Then, we have an army of baby sitters: my mother, the queen bee, lays one egg per cell. The egg is cared for by the worker bees and the larva that hatches 3 days later is fed a mixture of honey, pollen and royal jelly, a glandular secretion that for bees is equivalent to the milk of you mammals.

Of course we also have to defend the hive, and indeed we have the guardian bees, ready to unleash against predators the lethal weapon: the stinger. The trouble, my dears, is that we are like kamikaze. If we use the stinger, we know that we then have to die, but only if we attack you mammals! Your skin, in fact, is so elastic that we can no longer pull out the stinger. It's a different story for the other insects that try to bully us! In any case, we think a thousand times before stinging and never do it unless we hear a real red alert! What we keep in the hive is a precious treasure, for us and for our beekeeper, who thanks to us feeds his children.

Once I saw him put honey in many glass jars, then other humans came and put little pieces of metal or coloured paper in his hand and he gave them a jar in return. Inside was first quality stuff! Not like some shabby little jars I've heard about: I believe it, some beekeepers stretch honey with another sugary substance! Now, I'll let you in on a little secret. If you find yourself in front of a jar of 'solid' honey (and if you want to be erudite and give yourself a certain tone, you can use the beekeepers' technical term, i.e. 'crystallised'), it means that that honey is truly artisanal and not industrially processed. Who knows why, you humans love liquid honey, but very often to get it this way it is heated at high temperatures and all its beneficial properties are lost. Besides, do you want to put the convenience of not seeing all the honey drip ruinously from your spoon?