Our love for honey bees
First of all, let us start with a little explanation about who we are. We are people who really love and enjoy nature. For example, we can stare at a biotope aquarium for hours and we take the time to look at a group of deers with our binoculars. We were and are always interested in nature. Even in weeds that most people spray with poison. Something we don’t understand, as these weeds are very often healthy edible species... You get the point.
We quickly came to the conclusion that plants which are in need of pollination and pollinators, in this case honey bees, have evolved together in a very special way. Everything is perfectly coordinated. This applies not only to honey bees and the plants they pollinate, but also to solitary bees that are in some cases even monophagous.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about honey bees is their highly developed cooperation. Many people think that the queen bee determines what happens in the colony, the deception is in the name that this specific insect got. (Egg) mother would be more suitable. Its function is to lay several thousand eggs a day and to secrete hormones that the other honey bees spread as long as the queen has a good lay. The bee colony itself is a highly developed form of a society. There is no boss, no owner, but a deep-seated will to cooperate and survive together. We humans could learn something from this.
Honey bees use a very complex form of communication. They do this through body movement. By means of simple sounds created with vibrations, they can make with their wings and with hormones, odours they release. A lot of information is passed on through these forms of communication. Information such as ‘where did I find my nectar and how much is there?’, 'the queen is laying enough eggs, everything is fine.’ Or ‘we stop feeding the drone's and show them the door’.
Another remarkable fact is that the most concentrated brains discovered so far are those of a honey bee! So their intelligence per gram is theoretically the highest. This is partly due to their advanced communication. But also due the fact that honey bees have a very good ability to navigate and always remember information within two to three times, faster than most people. They can even get information from other bees, then do something else and use the information from the other bee afther doing this task to find that flower with that tasty nectar.
Honey bees are and remain insects, but their little brain has elevated them from a simple insect to the most important organism of the world. These are not my words, search the web. ⅓ of all flora and fauna on our planet is directly related to honey bees. If we lose the honey bees, our ecosystem will collapse like a house of cards. So let's take good care of it.
So, Why do we love honey bees? They are simply the most fascinating and important organism in the world.
Team Vicus Apis.