Being a perpetually late garden-planter, our crops arrive later in the year than most. Our corn stalks are just now tall and robust. While out in the garden with dogs and kids, my son pointed out that there were a lot of bees in the corn. Upon closer inspection I noticed a handful of bees hurriedly gathering pollen from a corn tassel.
Although the bees appeared to be in a race, they were acting in cooperation rather than competition with each other. One would scoop armloads of pollen from one tassel onto his back legs then hop over to the next tassel just as another bee would hop to the tassel previously occupied by the first. It made me think of synchronized swimming, without the swimming caps. Although for corn, wind does the majority of the pollinating; I was very happy to see my bee friends busily collecting pollen.
Bees perform the valuable service of crop pollination for us on a variety of crops. Approximately one-third of the foods we eat are dependent on pollinators. Bees, as well as some other insects, rise to the call. Foods such as watermelon, apples, apricots, blackberries, peaches and pears, carrots, celery, onions, mangoes, pumpkins, cucumbers and cherries are all pollinated by bees. If you are more of a carnivore than an herbivore consider this: The beef industry also depends on our little winged friends. Cattle graze on grains and grasses, but they also need alfalfa, clover and legumes (because of the higher protein content) which are bee-dependent for pollination. So if you enjoy hamburgers and steaks, cheddar cheese and milkshakes, then pay homage to the sacred little honey bee.
Pollination is just the tip of the iceberg for these amazing creatures and their extraordinary abilities. Here are a few more fantastic bee facts: Bees are the only insects that produce a food eaten by humans. Honey is the only food that contains all of the elements required to sustain life (vitamins, minerals, water and enzymes). A single bee will only produce about one-twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime. It takes about 556 worker bees to gather ingredients to make one pound of honey which they gather from about 2 million plant flowers. Bees can fly up to 15 miles per hour and for a distance of six miles. During the winter, honey bees feed on the honey they have made during the summer.
The bees that do all of this flying, gathering, hive-protection and honey-production work are the females. They are called the worker bees because they do all of the work. The male bees, appropriately called drones, do nothing, except mate; they do not even have a stinger. The females outnumber the males by as much as 200-to-1. What a ratio! However, lest you men wish for such a human arrangement, be advised that none of the female workers bees can mate. The only female bee that mates is the queen. The male drones spend their summers waiting for a chance to mate with the queen. When autumn arrives, the drones that did not have the chance to mate are expelled from the hive because they are of no use. The "lucky" drones that did have the chance to mate with the queen die immediately following their mating.
Although in my opinion that is not the ideal life for either male or female, I do think we can take a page or two from the Book of the Bee. Royden Brown may have said it best when he said "Unique among all God's creatures, only the honeybee improves the environment and preys not on any other species."
• Tug Gettling is the director of North Utah Valley Animal Services.
Posted in Local on Sunday, August 16, 2009 12:05 am Updated: 12:36 pm.
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