Bees

Bees

Bees play an important role in nature'sscheme of things. There are some 5,000 speciesof bees in North America. Most of them areimportant only to wild plants, but several hun-dred pollinate cultivated crops (over 100 species, for instance, visit alfalfa).

Value of Bees: The value of those whichpollinate only wild plants should not be mini-mized: they help to keep vital cover on mil-lions of acres not used for farming.

Once we took pollination of our crops forgranted. But it's a different story today. In thepast 50 years, under the pressures of a growingpopulation, more and more land was put undercultivation. But the more crops we planted,the faster we destroyed the basic means for afull crop return. Forests were cut down, woodsand wasteland destroyed and burrows rippedup, destroying the homes of the wild bees.

Concentrated plantings of one crop overlarge acreages left the bees no wild plants to live.on when the crop was not blooming; with noth-ing to fill in the gap in their food supply, they starved and disappeared practically overnight.And when indiscriminate spraying with power-ful insecticides came along, the wild bees peracre could almost be counted on the fingers ofone hand.

We simply do not have enough honeybees.Farmers in every state, according to the De-partment of Agriculture, could benefit by hav-ing more hives on or near their farms. Someareas need two or three times the number ofhives they now have, to insure adequate polli-nation of the crops grown there.

This is where an increase in wild beeswould be of immense help. Such an increasewould bolster the efforts of hard-working do-mestic honeybees and show up in a direct risein crop yields.

Wild Bees: Wild bees have certain char-acteristics that make them more valuable thantheir domesticated cousins. They are hardier,working in cold, rainy or windy weather, whenhoneybees will not venture from their cozyhives. Thus, they provide good sets of seed andfruit even in bad weather. In parts of NewEngland and eastern Canada, this is especiallyimportant to apple growers, for the weather isusually bad there during apple-blooming time.

Practically all wild bees form no colonies,in the sense that the honeybee does. The excep-tion to this is the bumblebee, who lives in acolony of some 50 to 500 individuals, with aqueen and worker castes. Many new drones and queens are produced each year, but onlythe fertilized queens live through the winter,each one forming a new colony in the spring.

The other wild bees are solitary dwellers.Each female functions both as queen andworker. She builds her own nest, sealing hereggs in cells with honey-moistened pollen ballsfor the young to feed on. Once this is done, shehas no further contact with her offspring.

Wild bees will nest almost anywhere.Sweat bees and mining bees construct under-ground burrows. Carpenter bees and leaf cut-wrs chisel their nests in timber, or use old beetleboles. Some wild bees nest in the natural chan-nels of hollow- or pithy-stemmed plants; otherstake their homes in abandoned snail shells or cavities in porous rocks.

The majority, however, are soil nesting.Almost any type of soil, moist or dry, loose or:acked, flat or vertical, can be their home.Alkali bees, in some areas the major pollinatorsalfalfa, nest in fairly sandy soil, often in'communities" of several thousand nests less''an an inch apart. Seed growers, knowing thatcommunities like these will insure pollination ofweir alfalfa for two miles around, protect themfrom disturbance. If small pieces of land areleft unfarmed near the alfalfa fields, the alkalibees will also spread to them and establish newcommunities there in one season.

Tests by various experiment stationsshowed that on a cultivated plot situated nextto overgrown land, wild bees were four timesas numerous as on tilled plots surrounded byother tilled land. To increase your wild beesyou can preserve some uncultivated or erodedland specifically for bees. Sometimes bee broodsfound on land that is to be tilled can be movedinto these areas. On cropland, avoid working,flooding or trampling the burrows of ground-nesting bees whenever possible.

Field borders, fencerows, ditch banks, andthe sides of roadways should be planted tonectar-producing plants. Kudzu and bicolor orLespedeza cuneata make excellent bee pastur-age, or use whatever is suitable for your region.Pithy-stemmed plants like elderberry, sumacand tree-of-heaven make fine nesting sites. Theyprovide erosion protection and food' and coverfor other wildlife, too. Multiflora rose fences are very good, and bunch-type perennial grassesalong the tops of banks are soil stabilizers aswell as nesting sites.

Trees for windbreaks and streambankprotection that also provide bee food andhomes include the Russian olive, Americanelm, catalpa, honey locust, basswood, syca-more, wild plum, and many others. In wood lot management, make sure bee trees are not cut down.

Bee plants are often synonymous with soil-saving plants. The legumes used for greenmanures, orchard cover crops and in rotationsprovide bee food in plenty. Often a small plant-ing of clover may be all that is necessary, withregular :_rop plants, to sustain a goodly popula-tion of wild bees all year. Improved pasturesand grassed waterways should have some cloverin their planting mixtures.

Bumblebees will nest in cans containing ahandful of mattress stuffing or similar material,hung up in sheltered places in your outbuild-ings. Certain other species can be induced toset up housekeeping in cans with lids and en-trance spouts, partially buried in well-drainedsoil. Some farmers break open her trees in thewoods, carrying the bees home in any handycontainer to be set up in suitable places aroundtheir farms. When walking through your fields,you can break over the stalks of hollow-stemmed plants like canebrake, teasel, milk-thistle, and wild parsnip, to provide nesting andhibernating places.

Some species of native bees are more effi-cient pollinators than honeybees. Red cloverblooms, having little nectar and the pollen atthe bottom of a deep corolla tube, are oftenpassed up by the honeybee; but the long-tongued bumblebee does an excellent job onthem. Honeybees can steal the nectar fromalfalfa blooms without "tripping" them to release the pollen. But alkali, leaf cutter andbumblebees are pollen collectors who trip everyblossom they visit.

On rangelands, where it is impractical tosupply honeybees for pollination, wild beeshave a big responsibility to keep the rangeplants reproducing year after year. Every rangereseeding program should include adaptedlegumes and other honey-producing plants toincrease the wild bees, and thus improve thefodder and fertility of the range.

Honeybees (Domestic): The honeybeeis a social insect. The queen, drone and workerbees cannot live alone. All members of thehoneybee colony divide labor to facilitate work,and there is never a time when the whole colonysleeps. Honeybees take rest periods throughoutthe day.

The single function of the drones (males)is to mate with the queen. They become sexu-ally mature at ten to 12 days. During the after-noon virgin queens fly to "drone congregationareas" where mating takes place. Drones die inthe mating process and are not present in thecolony during the winter.

The queen is the most important part ofthe colony for two reasons—she lays eggs toinsure the survival of the colony and controlsthe social order of the colony with the chemicalsubstances she secretes. The queen is differentfrom worker bees in that she has no wax glands,no pollen baskets on her hind legs and no modi-fications on her forelegs. She is also larger andher abdomen is longer and more slender.

Worker bees are female and perform allother tasks for the colony. The worker beecleans cells, at first, and later feeds larvae. Hernext duty is to guard the hive. After these tasksare completed, the worker bee begins to workin the fields. The ability of the worker bee tochange from one task to another insures the survival of the colony. She lives for six weeksduring the peak honey season, and six monthsin the winter.

There are three races of domestic (honey)bees: Carniolans, Caucasians and Italians.

Carniolan bees of the Alpine strain can bedistinguished by their dark gray abdominal seg-ments with bands of white hairs. These beesare the finest gray bees in existence and thelargest of hive bees. The Alpine strain is lessinclined to swarm than other bees and areextremely prolific.

Carniolans are very gentle, quiet on thecombs, good breeders, and have a long life.These bees are economic consumers of stores.honest workers and winter-hardy. They buildregular combs with white cappings well suitedfor comb honey production. They are brave indefending their hives, but gentle to humans.

Carniolan queens are darker than theworkers, and drones are large and gray coloredwith or without visible bands.

Caucasian bees are somewhat parallel ormerit a good second to the Carniolans in combhoney production. The Mountain Gray Cau-casian can be compared to the Alpine Carniolanexcept it is smaller and intensely propolizing.The Caucasians are more immune to Americanfoulbrood than other standard bees.

Italian bees are most commonly used inAmerica and enjoy a high productivity. "Pure"Italians are three banded. Extra-yellow strainsof four bands are found in the United States.The queens are yellower than the workers, andthe drones are darker.

Italian bees are more reliable in theirswarming habits, but are really no better orworse than other honeybees. However, thesebees may rob and may be a menace. Theirdefense of their home is normal and they arefair in accepting new queens. In general, ItalJam are known for their good dispositions.

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