June 11, 2008
My first memorable bee experience was the day my brother yelped in terror from a sting on his pinkie toe. Scooped into the arms of my mother, he emerged a short time later with a poultice of baking soda on his foot.
Eight at the time, I was unconcerned with my younger brother's malady. Instead, I pondered why the bee lay dead in the grass after afflicting such terror and whether the encounter meant something more. Years later, two events have prompted my return to pondering - the disappearance of bees and the purchase of them by friends.
Scientists estimate there are more than 20,000 bee species worldwide. Except for the highest altitudes, poles and some oceanic islands, bees thrive in warm, arid and semi-arid areas like ours. Ranging in length from 0.08 to 1.6 inches, their colors include black, gray, yellow, red, metallic green and blue.
Bees include three subsets - solitary, parasitic and social - each providing a natural laboratory for studying insect social behavior. Female solitary bees construct burrows of earthen chambers with enough pollen (food) for a young bee to grow from a hatchling to larva. After depositing her eggs, she moves on to construct another chamber.
Conversely, the two parasitic bee types don't forage or make nests. Instead, they capitalize on the workings of other bees. Cleptoparasitic bees invade solitary bee burrows, hide eggs in the chambers before a solitary female can and then close off the chambers. Social parasite bees kill resident queens, lay eggs in the host's chambers, then force hive workers to raise the parasitic young. Ugh!
Social (Winnie the Pooh) bees form highly specialized colonies. Through touch, sound and dance, individual bees focus on defense, food or reproduction. Mating once with multiple drones, the single queen remains fertile for life, laying 2,000 eggs daily. Fertilized eggs become female workers, unfertilized eggs become male drones, and new queens are "created" by feeding young larvae "royal jelly."
Simply through pollination, bees added $15 billion last year to crop values at a time when bees began disappearing at a phenomenal rate because of colony collapse disorder, called CCD. To date, many beekeepers have lost two-thirds of their colonies to CCD. While scientists now believe CCD is attributable to a highly pathogenic virus, others question why the virus was able to invade bee colonies and suggest that environmental factors like pesticides weakened the insect's ability to fight off infection.
As for me, I wonder which sting is worse - my brother's pinkie toe, $15 billion in lost crops, or the long-term impact to blossoms everywhere that rely on bees.
So, to my friends who've bought bees and built hives for an insect that sends shivers up our toes, thank you.
Sometimes the sting is worth it.
