2023-10-08 13:22:15
As long as it is warm, honey bees fly. They must be able to occasionally ingest nectar or other sweet fuel. Flying takes energy. It makes bees warm, especially honey bees, because they wear fur. They are always quick on March spring days and can survive the winter.
With their fluttering they keep their winter home in a hollow tree, a cupboard or hive at the right temperature. If you flap your arms as fast as you can like a penguin for a minute, you’ll probably get hot and tired. But no matter how fast you flap your wings, you won’t catch a honey bee. I read on the internet that it spreads its wings 230 times per second.
Now, in late summer, many bees are dying. This leaves fewer people who rely on the winter food supply. The males, who do not perform any ball themselves and, as in most animal species, have a job description hardly broader than that of sperm donor, are rejected after the mating flight. The workers chase those left behind from the nest, if necessary with their stingers.
A drop of honey water
These males, called drones, fly around desperately looking for sweets. They never looked for food, they were fed as babies by the workers, and now they suddenly have to earn a living. One flies wandering into our kitchen window.
The wanderer perches on the windowsill. He walks around sniffing towards the fruit bowl. My beloved, always deeply concerned about the fate of doomed animals, serves a teaspoon of a 50 percent solution of honey in warm water. This way, the drone is still fed with what bee workers have produced.
Refueled, the bee flies away, only to return the next day. The bee visits us for days for its drop of honey water. It could be a different bee each time, but for romantic reasons we pretend it is the same.
Then it will become autumn for a short time. The bee does not return.
Three times a week, biologist Koos Dijksterhuis writes about something that grows or blooms. Read his previous Nature Diaries here.
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#Honeybee #refuels #Fidelity