Bee Superpowers.

Do bees wear their pants on the outside?

One of the amazing things about the internet is the amount of outstandingly strange information that is not only OUT THERE but PROVABLY TRUE and the internet and all its little helpers is there like a data patron saint distributing wonderful nuggets of knowledge directly into our homes. 

I have been looking for information on the behaviour of bees during before and after storms. Not that i'm obsessed or anything but you may remember, if British, that the last time we were forecast a superstorm in 1987 everyone poo pooed it and subsequently half the trees in the south east were repositioned horizontally across roads, railways, gardens and rooves. In the UK we suffer from remarkably little severe weather. Three inches of snow reduces the flow of traffic to walking pace and if we're forecast what in India would be a day's rain, the Automobile Association advises everyone to stay at home and buy SCUBA equipment. 

Anyway, I digress. During my search I found numerous astounding pieces of information. Bees it seems sense the magnetic field of the earth and this is how they orientate themselves. I'm not sure how true this is. If you look at the 3 feet or 3 miles rule where you can either move them less than 3 feet or more than 3 miles or they end up lost it suggests that perhaps their inbuilt GPS is less accurate than Apple Maps. This said, at least they'd still be on the same continent which is not necessarily the case for apple users if early experiences with the Apple GPRS system were to be believed. 

I found the following quote on cracked.com

Bees are in tune with electricity in lots of unique ways. First, they can sense the Earth's magnetic field and use it to navigate, which is cool, but not exactly rare (cows and fish can figure out which way north is based on the Earth's magnetic field, and as a rule, anything that a cow can do isn't impressive)

I disagree about anything a cow does being unimpressive. Cows convert grass into what is basically a high fat diet through the magic of four stomachs. In nature they eat grass and other green pasture and produce live young sufficiently advanced to walk within moments of birth. They support whole civilisations with their blood and milk and are intelligent enough not to jump over fences when a human being sits on their backs. Digression again. There could be lots of that.

However they bees take their affinity with electrons a step further. Apparently they can sense static in the air which tells them when a storm is coming. Some people can do this too. They feel a change in the air pressure which they perceive as a headache but is really simply a change in the internal pressure system. Apparently they harness the static they build up while flying to harvest pollen. Clever stuff!

Now I have to warn you that this site does state as fact that bees make honey out of pollen. (Rolls eyes) Surely EVERYBODY knows bees make honey out of nectar or other sources of sucrose or fructose solution, by mixing it with enzymes from their hypopharyngeal glands which alter the structure of the sugar to produce glucose and other simple sugars. They also add many other constituents and the flowers they harvest from contribute their own. This carbohydrate rich food powers their day to day energy requirements for flying, keeping the hive warm and caring for the queen and brood. Pollen is made into so called Bee Bread and is a protein substance that supports a bee's physical development and growth. 

It is worth a look at cracked.com but when doing so it's probably worth reading with your critical faculties engaged. There's some really interesting stuff there but while the writer is hugely amusing they don't exactly check all their facts.

However I'm happy with the internal image of my bees wearing their underwear outside their trousers with litte B's printed on their vests. They astound me every day. They produce a food that never goes off, that nourishes and prevents disease and despite their size and the fact they make this miracle food they aren't extinct. How cool is that?

Yours in wonder

Katherine