The Wonderful World of Bees
Spots of yellow and black flicker near a wall of wildflowers as the distant thrum of vibrating wings dances across the wind, penetrating your ears with nature’s classic spring sonata. Britain’s bees have finally awoken from their winter slumber, just in time for World Bee Day.
World Bee Day Illustration, by Aimee Lee.
From gregarious honeybees humbly dedicating their life to serve their queen to the anti-social solitary red mason bee, planet Earth is home to over 20,000 species of bee - with the UK claiming ownership of around 270 species – all displaying their own unique personalities. But, aside from their charming allure and enchanting reputation as the embodiment of Britain’s natural beauty, bees play a pivotal role in the successful functioning of diverse ecosystems, providing a selection of key eco-services to benefit a multitude of organisms. Even the simple act of pollination is an essential activity for the survival of our green spaces, with approximately 90% of the world’s wild flowering plants, over 75% of global food crops, and 35% of agricultural land reliant on animal pollination. If bees, our free workers, were to disappear, manual pollination is estimated to cost a mammoth £1.8 billion each year.
Bees also act as diagnostic indicators of environmental health. Their absence, presence, and abundance within a specific habitat signposts a change in the surrounding environment and can highlight where change may be needed. By monitoring the health status of our wild bees, environmental professionals can predict variations across ecosystems, and employ important preventive measures in time to minimise their decline. In short, not only are bees a key contributor to the stability and security of our food supply, they are fundamental in the plight to conserve global biodiversity.
But the bee’s cheery tale is permeated with sinister twists and turns, as the increased use of pesticides within the agricultural industry, climate change, and habitat degradation is leading them down the primrose path to a premature demise. According to Friends of the Earth, the UK has lost approximately 13 bee species since 1900, with a further 35 facing extinction.
For the past three years, the 20th May has been pencilled into the ecological calendar by the United Nations (UN) as a celebratory day dedicated to raising awareness of the importance of our precious pollinators, and informing the world of the current environmental threats bees are bravely battling.
To celebrate World Bee Day, here are four facts about our favourite winged arthropods to wet your whistle and curb your appetite for knowledge on all things Hymenopteran.
1. Who Run the World? Girls!
Expertly sung by Bee-yonce, female honeybees rule the roost with their powerful matriarchy. With daily domestic duties ranging from making honeycomb, tending to the larvae, and gathering pollen - female worker bees are the backbone of the colony.
2. Fatal Attraction
On the contrary, male honeybees (referred to as ‘drones’) exist solely to mate with the queen and are confined to the six walls of their hexagonal hives, ingesting honey cells for survival. The mechanics of honeybee mating are gruesome, and unfortunately, the life of a drone bee is often cut short after mating. An unlucky adaptation of drone anatomy means that dismounting the queen rips out the male’s endophallus, resulting in a painful death from a ruptured abdomen post-mating.
3. All Aboard Bee-ritish Airways
Bees and other valuable insect species now have a custom-built, fully functioning public transport network readily available to whisk them across the UK, known as B-lines. Cleverly conceived by renowned conservation charity Buglife, the B-line brainchild pledges to restore 150,000 hectares of new and existing wildflower corridors in a bid to reverse the dramatic decline of our insects, through a diverse variety of habitats. Buglife described B-lines as a “series of ‘insect pathways’ running through our countryside and towns”, to bridge fragmented wildlife areas and green spaces together to form an intricate network of passageways across the British landscape.
4. Feet for Thought
A group of scientists from the University of Bristol have revealed from extensive research that bumblebees leave behind ‘smelly footprints’ like a chemical autograph on plants, to recall previous visits and inform other bees that certain flowers are depleted of resources. Richard Pearce from the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Bristol, who directed the study, said "Bumblebees secrete a substance whenever they touch their feet to a surface, much like us leaving fingerprints on whatever we touch. Marks of this invisible substance can be detected by themselves and other bumblebees, and are referred to as scent-marks”. Bumblebees have the ingenuity to use their ‘smelly footprints’ to identify their own scent, the scent of a nestmate, and the scent of an unfamiliar bee, resulting in greater success finding food and avoiding unnecessarily expending energy visiting flowers that offer no resources.
If you want to help fight for the survival of our fuzzy, flighty friends this World Bee Day, then please check out Bumblebee Conservation Trust, The Wildlife Trust, and RSPB websites for more information.
Thank you to Aimee Lee for her beautiful illustrations. You can find more of her work on Instagram @alllustration
Rosy Fox
Rosy is a BSc Animal Management graduate from the University of Derby, with a strong interest in entomology. Nature has always been an intrinsic part of her life growing up; she enjoys intertwining her love for the natural environment with her passion for writing. Rosy currently volunteers for RSPB Sherwood Forest writing blogs to inspire and educate visitors, and she aspires to continue bridging the gap between nature and humanity - especially insects!