An informative poem about honey bees.
The Dancing bees, in their unshamed light, devour the sun's doing and regurgitate it again.
They take on a secret form. From a soft chitin dermis they emerge, pale, then harden, hairy and wet, and clean themselves.
At sunset, when the air cools, they return to their hives, loaded with pollen or nectar, and desposit these resources in the outer cells. In about two days, the fermented nectar becomes honey.
The Drone's eyes are close together, making him appear a little daft. The Workers feed the Drones until the end of Summer, when they tear them to shreds and toss them over the hive landing board, there to perish helplessly in the dust or grass. This is called The Massacre of the Drones.
To feed herself and her tribe, the bee consumes a tiny droplet of nectar collected from a flower. The nectar is a clear, sugary substance that flowers perspire at the very base of their petals. The bee swallows it and it descends to the Honey Sac, an antechamber of the stomach. There it sits, to hold in wait, small amounts being released into the stomach as the bee's energy wanes. She has conscious control over this mechanism.
If she is not at work she patrols the hive; appearing to be idle, she is actually conducting a survey. If she finds something amiss in one part of the hive, she will alert the others, and all will contribute their force, sometimes re-activating long unused cellular and glandular mechanisms, to right whatever has gone wrong and reinstate a condition of balance.
The bees taste my hands, but leave them empty. Sometimes a bee stings me if she suspects I've come to loot the hive. She dies in the act. I haven't seen the bees at night, collected around the Queen in a moving bulb.
The Queen Bee, on her nuptial flight, is inseminated with enough sperm to keep her laying eggs incessantly for one to seven years. The Drone who inseminates her dies from the massive wound left by his depositor's being ripped out after ejaculation.
Bees born in the Spring live up to 5 weeks. Bees born in Autumn live longer, hibernating in the hive through Winter, gathered in a mass around the Queen to keep her temperature high. The outside of the mass may be as low as 55 degrees, whereas the inside of the mass, closest to the Queen, reaches 95 degrees.
Bees' sense of smell is located in their antennae. Bees become flower-constant, each bee specializing in a single type of flower, learning how to quickly and efficiently collect resources from that flower alone. It is through a well-developed sense of scent that, once close to the plants of the field, bees locate their special flowers.
They take on a secret form. From a soft chitin dermis they emerge, pale, then harden, hairy and wet, and clean themselves.
At sunset, when the air cools, they return to their hives, loaded with pollen or nectar, and desposit these resources in the outer cells. In about two days, the fermented nectar becomes honey.
The Drone's eyes are close together, making him appear a little daft. The Workers feed the Drones until the end of Summer, when they tear them to shreds and toss them over the hive landing board, there to perish helplessly in the dust or grass. This is called The Massacre of the Drones.
To feed herself and her tribe, the bee consumes a tiny droplet of nectar collected from a flower. The nectar is a clear, sugary substance that flowers perspire at the very base of their petals. The bee swallows it and it descends to the Honey Sac, an antechamber of the stomach. There it sits, to hold in wait, small amounts being released into the stomach as the bee's energy wanes. She has conscious control over this mechanism.
If she is not at work she patrols the hive; appearing to be idle, she is actually conducting a survey. If she finds something amiss in one part of the hive, she will alert the others, and all will contribute their force, sometimes re-activating long unused cellular and glandular mechanisms, to right whatever has gone wrong and reinstate a condition of balance.
The bees taste my hands, but leave them empty. Sometimes a bee stings me if she suspects I've come to loot the hive. She dies in the act. I haven't seen the bees at night, collected around the Queen in a moving bulb.
The Queen Bee, on her nuptial flight, is inseminated with enough sperm to keep her laying eggs incessantly for one to seven years. The Drone who inseminates her dies from the massive wound left by his depositor's being ripped out after ejaculation.
Bees born in the Spring live up to 5 weeks. Bees born in Autumn live longer, hibernating in the hive through Winter, gathered in a mass around the Queen to keep her temperature high. The outside of the mass may be as low as 55 degrees, whereas the inside of the mass, closest to the Queen, reaches 95 degrees.
Bees' sense of smell is located in their antennae. Bees become flower-constant, each bee specializing in a single type of flower, learning how to quickly and efficiently collect resources from that flower alone. It is through a well-developed sense of scent that, once close to the plants of the field, bees locate their special flowers.
posted by tiny-o at 8:48:00 PM
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