BEE CONNECTION

By Kristen Townsend, M.S.

Honey bees (Apis mellifera L.) are social insects that, while part of a community of many pollinating insects, are the most productive and efficient species used in the pollination of a wide variety of plants.  One-third of commercially grown crops rely on honey bee pollination (Klein et al, 2007 as reported by Kremen et al, 2007).  In addition to their pollination services, honey bees store a large amount of pollen and nectar which can be used by bees and beekeepers.

The fossil record of honey bees, dating back approximately 35 million years ago, shows both a very long, unchanged morphological history as well as thousands of years of an evolving relationship with humans and exploitation by humans.  This fossil record shows an initial morphological evolution that was quite rapid, evolving from what was known as genus Electrapis to the genus currently known as Apis within a 10 million year time span, and throughout the last 30 million years have remained relatively unchanged (Seeley, 1985).  It is presumed that social behavior and physical morphology of the worker bee evolved simultaneously, and thus the social organization of honey bees also has a 30 million year history of established behavior patterns.

India and its surrounding regions have been the location of natural geographic distribution and the source of the greatest species diversity of the genus Apis and therefore thought to be the area of origin and early evolution of these species except for Apis mellifera.  A. mellifera appears to have originated in the tropic and sub-tropic regions of Africa and later migrated to western Asia and some cooler European regions. 

As a result of European beekeepers moving to various settlements A. mellifera gained worldwide distribution.  The adaptive nature of these honey bees is seen in their success within a wide range of habitats, climatic conditions and flora, spread from the southern African savannah, through rainforest, desert, and mild Mediterranean climate through northern Europe and southern Scandinavia (Winston, 1987).  It is primarily the European races of Apis mellifera that have become affectionately known as “honey bees” in North America.

Morphologically, the honey bee demonstrates very efficient engineering.  Their bodies are built such that they have been described as elegant, graceful and athletic (Winston, 1987). The social organization and behavior patterns of the bees underwent a simultaneous rapid evolution that has been thought to provide them with the high level of stability and long-term survival that they have displayed in so many geographic locations over millions of years (Seeley, 1985).  The social organization of a colony of honey bees is so cohesive in nature that they have been referred to as a “superorganism”, a term originally coined by William Morton Wheeler in 1911 based on his work on ants (Tautz, 2008).  This term refers to a colony as an indivisible whole, functioning as a single organism.  Within a colony exists a queen, drones (males), and workers (all female).

The specificity of roles for each bee in the hive and the development of precise communication has allowed the honey bee species over millions of years to continuously adapt to changing climates as they have been transported from their location of origin to span the global community, until recently. Very noticeably in 2006, honey beekeepers everywhere started experiencing unexplainable disappearances of their colonies of bees (VanEngelsdorp, 2009).  Also in the last several years, agricultural practices have been shifting and industrial development has been increasing.  These changes require deeper insight into the impact that human activity is having on the environment as chemicals, pesticides and even radioactive material that enter the soil and waterways or are sprayed on fields can all find their way through the roots of the vegetation in question and be detectable in the floral nectar and pollen, which is largely collected by honey bees. 

While research continues to make efforts in studying contributing factors to the disappearance of the bees (Colony Collapse Disorder), it is widely accepted that the abundant use of pesticides has been a serious threat to the bees’ health. Planting pollinator gardens to offer more abundant and diverse nutritional sources are a simple, tangible effort that we each can make. Please check out more resources on our website to get involved!

References
Kremen C, Williams N, Aizen M, Herren B, LeBuhn G, Minckley R, Packer L, Potts S, Roulston T, Steffan-Dewenter I, Vazquez D, Winfree R, Adams L, Klein M, Regetz J, Ricketts T. 2007. Pollination and other ecosystem services produced by mobile organisms: a conceptual framework for the effects of land-use change. Ecology Letters 10: 299-314.

Seeley T. 1985. Honeybee Ecology: A Study of Adaptation in Social Life. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Tautz J. 2008. The Buzz about Bees: Biology of a Superorganism. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.

vanEngelsdorp D, Evans JD, Saegerman C, Mullin C, Haubruge E, Nguyen BK, Frazier M, Frazier J, Cox-Foster D, Chen Y, Underwood R, Tarpy DR, Pettis JS. 2009. Colony Collapse Disorder: A Descriptive Study. PLoS ONE 4(8): e6481.

Von Frisch K. 1973. Decoding the Language of the Bee. Nobel Lecture.

Winston M. 1987. The Biology of the Honey Bee. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.