Honey Bees: Species and Importance of Honey Bees!
Rearing of honey bees for obtaining honey and bee wax is called apiculture.
Castes of Honey bees:
Honey bees build their nest combs on the trees. They are highly colonial, social and polymorphic insects. The honey bees have best developed social life.
Three types of individuals (castes) are found in the colony of honey bees;
(i) Queen is a fertile female which lays eggs. Normally one queen is found in one nest.
(ii) Drones are males which mate with queen. Their number in the colony is not much. Drones are produced by parthenogenesis.
(iii) Workers are sterile females and perform various duties of the colony. The queens and drones are fed by the workers. The worker bees are smallest members of the colony. They have chewing and lapping type of mouth parts, modified for collecting nectar and pollen of the flowers. The abdomen contains the wax glands and the sting.
The worker bees are of three types:
(a) Scavenger bees
(b) Nurse bees and
(c) Scout bees.
Ernest Spytzner (1788) was the first to draw attention to the fact that bees communicate by means of definite movements now called “bee dances”. Prof Karl Von Frisch decoded the language of “bee dances” and got “Nobel Prize” in medicine or physiology for it in 1973. He discovered that scout bees perform two types of dances for communication,
(i) Round dance is performed when a newly discovered food source is close (less than 75 metres) to the hive
(ii) Tail wagging dance is performed for long distance sources.
Eggs of queen hatch into white, legless larvae which spin delicate silken cocoons around themselves and turn into pupae. Each pupa develops into an adult. The adult comes out by cutting wall of cocoon first and secondly by breaking the wax cap of the cell.
During first 2 to 3 days, all larvae of bee are fed on a special proteinaceous food, called “Royal jelly” or bee milk which is secreted by the hypo pharyngeal glands of the young workers. After that coarser food, the “Bee Bread”, which is mixture of honey and pollen grain, is given. However, the queen forming larvae are fed on royal jelly for the full larval life and these larvae are also taken for further development into a special chamber called the queen’s chamber or cell.
Species of Honey bees:
There are four important species of honey-bees;
(i) Apis mellifera (Italian Bee),
(ii) A. indica (Indian Bee),
(iii) A. dorsata (rock bee),
(iv) A. florea (little bee). All of them occur in nature as wild insects. However, because of their high economic importance, the honey-bees, especially, A. mellifera are domesticated and cultured, viz., reared and bred in artificial hives. Of these the most common species in wild state is Apis indica while in domestic state it is Apis mellifera.
Importance of Honey bees:
Honey bees have the following importance.
(i) Honey:
The honey is a neutral, natural valuable tonic for human body. Honey is a sweet, viscous edible fluid. Chemical composition of honey is (i) ash 1.00%, (ii) minerals (0.22 to 0.3 per cent), e.g., calcium, iron, phosphate and manganese, (iii) vitamins (0.2 to 0. 5 per cent), e.g., pantothenic acid, biotin, pyridoxine, choline, ascorbic acid, thiamine, riboflavin and niacin, (iv) Sugars (20 to 40 per cent), e.g., levulose (38.90%), dextose (21.28%), maltose (8.81 %) and sucrose (1.9%), (v) Water (60 – 80%), (vi) Amino acids, enzymes. Honey also contains pollen.
The colour, flavour and smell of honey depend on the flowers from which nectar is collected. It is an energy rich food. One kilogram of honey contains 3200 calories. A number of Ayurvedic medicines are taken with honey.
(ii) Bee wax:
Bee wax is made of secretion of worker bees’ abdominal glands. It is a product of industrial importance. It is used in the manufacture of many items including cosmetics, shaving cream, face cream, ointments, plasters, carbon papers, pencils, electric goods, toothpaste, lotions, furniture-polishes, boot-polishes, protective coating, ink paints and candles. It is also used in model and mould making and in printing industry. It is also used in the laboratory for microtomy with the common wax for block preparation of the tissues.
(iii) Pollination:
The honey bees are pollinators of many crop species such as sunflower, Brassica, apple and pear.
(iv) Medicinal value:
A drug, prepared from the bodies of honey bees, is used in the treatment of Diphtheria and some other dangerous diseases. The venom of stings of honey bees has been used in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis and snake bite.
Rearing of Honey bees:
The honey-bees are reared in wooden boxes having a large brood chamber placed on a wooden platform with an opening for the entry and the exit to the bees at the bottom. A number of frames coated with wax sheets having hexagonal imprints are placed in the chamber vertically with the help of wires.
The bees start making cells along the margins of hexagonal imprints. Each wax sheet, known as comb foundation, provides the foundation arc for the bees to build combs on both the sides. A chamber called super having additional similar frames for more comb foundations meant for the expansion of the hive, is placed over the brood chamber.
To start a colony in the artificial hive, a gravid (fertilized) queen is inducted into the brood chamber. Artificial hives are placed in gardens, orchards and fields having flowering plants to provide the pollen and nectar.
When sufficient honey has been stored, the combs are removed from the frames and then centrifuged to extract the honey. The same comb can be used again. The appliances used for the extraction of honey are a pair of gloves, a knife, a brush to remove the bees from taken out combs and a centrifuge.
How is nectar changed into honey?
Nectar is a sweet viscous secretion secreted by flowers of plants; by attracting the insects it helps in pollination. When the bee sucks the nectar from the flowers, it passes this nectar to its honey sac where it gets mixed with some acid secretion. In honey sac, sucrose (sugar) of the nectar is converted into dextrose and laevulose by the action of invertase enzyme. After regurgitation the treated nectar finally changes into honey which is stored in special cells of hive for future use.
Bee Enemies:
These include the wax moths (e.g., Galleria mellonella), wasp (e,g., Vespa), black ants (e.g., Camponotus compressus) and bee eaters (e.g., Merops orientalis and king crow, Dicrurus macrocerus). Man is the last but worst enemy of honey bees.
Bee Diseases:
Honey bees suffer from Nosema disease caused by a sporozoan Nosema apis, paralysis dysentery and acarine disease caused by a parasitic mite, Acarapis woodi.