Bee Zaagar - Apiary and Beekeeping News

All About the Birds and the Bees -- No, Just the Bees
Written by Mario Ritter
19 December 2005

I'm Steve Ember with the VOA Special English Agriculture Report.

Most people have heard the sound of bees among flowers. Bees live almost everywhere in the world -- except the arctic areas. Many kinds of agriculture depend on these small, social insects. Without bees, fruit and nut growers as well as many other farmers would not have a crop.

There are more than twenty thousand kinds of bees. But only honey bees make enough honey for people to use. Honey bees are highly organized social insects. They work together in a group called a colony. Each colony lives in a hive. It contains one queen bee -- she lays all the eggs from which the members of the colony come. Each colony has only a few hundred males, called drones. The majority of all bees in a colony are workers, which are all females.

Bees even have a special stomach, called a honey stomach. It is used to store sweet fluid that the bees gather from flowers. Bees also have long hairs on their body and legs. These hairs capture pollen as bees go from flower to flower. Some of the pollen is taken back to the hive. Some, however, is passed to the next flower. This is how many plants are fertilized. Pollen is the reproductive material of plants. Many important agricultural crops depend on bees for fertilization.

Inside their hives, bees store sweet fluid from flowers, called nectar, and also pollen. They may even gather nectar from some other kinds of insects. These kinds of nectar are also stored in the hive. Bees have organs that produce a fatty substance called wax. They use wax to build structures in the hive that hold eggs and store honey.

Bees make honey through a process. They add liquid from their own mouths to the nectar they have stored in the hive. The liquid breaks down the nectar into simple sugars. As the honey is stored, it dries. It becomes thicker and darker.

Honey can be very thin and light in color or dark and thick. How the honey looks depends on the kinds of flowers used by the bees. Most honey is the easily recognized golden color. Although bees are often thought of as honey-makers, they provide a surprising number of products. Also, their greatest economic value is in fertilizing crops -- not in making honey.

Next week, we will tell about important products provided by bees. We will also tell about problems in beekeeping.

This VOA Special English Agriculture Report was written by Mario Ritter. Our reports are online at voaspecialenglish.com. I'm Steve Ember.

Bees Keep Busy Producing More Than Just Honey (Part 2 of 3)
Written by Mario Ritter
26 December 2005

I'm Steve Ember with the VOA Special English Agriculture Report.

Last week we talked about how bees make honey. Yet bees also produce other useful materials.

Beeswax is another product, although much less of it is produced than honey. Bees need to eat about three kilograms of honey, or more, to produce less than one-half kilogram of wax.

The beauty industry uses a lot of beeswax as a base for skin care products. Anyone who has ever lit a candle might have lit one made of beeswax. Woodworkers mix beeswax with oils to protect wood surfaces. And leatherworkers use beeswax to protect leather from water.

There is even an old saying, "mind your own beeswax." It means "mind your own business." We never said it was a nice old saying.

The "beeswax" in this case may only be a play on the word "business." But some people do mind their beeswax. It is their business.

Beekeepers use it to make structures called foundations. Bees build hives by adding wax to the foundations. Bees keep honey, food and their young in these structures.

Most people know not to interfere with a busy bee. Worker bees have a sting that can inject poison. But the poison is also a valuable product. In some people, a bee sting causes their throat or tongue to swell up. This reaction can be deadly. But treatment with bee poison can sometimes help protect people who suffer these reactions.

In warmer areas of the Americas, some bees are a special concern. Years ago African bees were brought to South America to improve honey production. But they spread out of control. They mixed with populations of European honey bees raised in the Americas.

Africanized honey bees are very aggressive. They have killed animals and people. In the nineteen seventies, they became known as “killer bees.” This may overstate the threat. But Africanized bees must be treated with special care.

Bees face threats of their own. In the Americas, Asia and Europe, mites can destroy hives. The tiny creatures suck the blood of bees. Wax moths are insects that eat wax in the hive. And there are bacterial diseases that attack and destroy young bees.

All these problems add to the cost of keeping bees. But beekeeping remains mostly low cost and very important to agriculture. Listen next week for the final part of our report.

This VOA Special English Agriculture Report was written by Mario Ritter. Our reports are online at voaspecialenglish.com. I'm Steve Ember.

The Business of Bees and Beekeeping (Part 3 of 3)
Written by Mario Ritter
03 January 2006

I'm Steve Ember with the VOA Special English Agriculture Report.

Bees not only produce honey and wax, they also provide an important service to farmers. Many crops require bees to pollinate them.

Bees gather sweet liquid called nectar from flowers. As they do this, the reproductive material of the flowers, pollen, sticks to the bee. Pollen travels from plant to plant this way.

Many different fruits, vegetables, nuts and seed crops depend on bees for reproduction. Also, many flowers grown for their beauty need bees to pollinate them.

In the United States, the secretary of agriculture appoints industry leaders to the National Honey Board. This group provides production information about the honey and beekeeping business. One of the reports said bees pollinated more than fourteen and one-half thousand million dollars worth of crops in two thousand.

Selling the services of bees as pollinators is also an important business. Bees pollinate almost all almond and apple trees. Vegetables like broccoli, carrots, celery and onions require bee pollination.

Experts say even crops that do not require bee pollination can be increased with the help of bees. Also, the quality of many crops depends on the amount of pollination they receive. Crops like apples can grow unevenly if bees do not provide enough pollen for good reproduction.

Pollinated crops supply much of the vegetable fats in the human diet. As much as one-third of all food products are directly or indirectly linked to bee-pollinated crops. Bee pollination is a central activity in the food supply chain.

The United States was estimated several years ago to have two and one-half million colonies being used to pollinate crops. Between two and four colonies are needed to pollinate one hectare of most crops.

Today, many beekeepers see pollination as a more important activity than producing honey. Many farmers see bee pollination as a good investment because it improves the quality and productivity of their crops.

This VOA Special English Agriculture Report was written by Mario Ritter. This was the third and final part of our report about bees and beekeeping. Internet users can read and listen to all of our reports at voaspecialenglish.com.

If you have a general question about agriculture, e-mail it to special@voanews.com. Please include your name and where you are. We cannot answer questions personally, but we might be able to use them in our reports. I'm Steve Ember.