As the days grow longer and buds burst into blooms, we’re on the lookout for the return of everybody’s favorite essential pollinator, the honeybee! If you have ever wondered why honeybees are so skilled at helping to transform flowers into fruit and veg like apples, avocados, blueberries, and broccoli, it’s because they’re wicked smart. How smart, you ask? Well, even though a honeybee’s brain is about 20,000 times smaller than a human brain, that seed-sized morsel of gray matter packs a lot of computing power. A honeybee brain is capable of managing 10 trillion computations a second—that’s 625 times the speed of most advanced supercomputers. Research conducted by scientists at the University of Melbourne indicates that honeybees can do basic arithmetic, understand the concept of zero, and learn and teach other bees how to gain rewards. All of that buzz-worthy brilliance is put to good use efficiently managing a complex series of tasks that contribute to the cross-pollination of 30 percent of human food crops and 90 percent of wild plants. Honeybees also use their smarts to locate prime floral real estate by color and smell and share the inside scoop on best bets for plentiful pollen and nectar with their hive mates through a complicated “waggle” dance language.
What’s more, these winged brainiacs are the ultimate team players, efficiently performing well-defined hierarchical functions within their colonies. The apis mellifera monarch’s, or queen honeybee’s, one and only job is to create more bees. The queen bee can lay up to 2,000 eggs a day which develop into queens, drones, or worker bees. The bees that you see buzzing about outside the hive collecting pollen and nectar from flowers are sterile female worker bees. Worker bees are also responsible for keeping the inside of the hive tidy as well as feeding the queen, drones, and bee larvae. Male bees or drones have only two functions in the hive, eating and mating with the queen. While that may sound like the good life, once a drone mates with the queen, it falls to the ground and dies. Drones that don’t make the cut with the queen are ejected from the hive by worker bees come winter.
Queen bees are not born to the throne. They are created through a process where larvae designated for insect royalty by their placement in special queen cells in the hive are fed exclusively the aptly named royal jelly. A milky substance that is secreted from glands in the heads of worker bees, royal jelly is composed of proteins, sugars, fatty acids, and trace minerals which help queens develop their reproductive capacity. Tasked with the very important job of keeping the colony humming with new offspring, a queen honeybee can live anywhere from one to six years, significantly longer than the seasonal life span of female worker bees and male drones.
Despite having an amazing capacity to problem solve and work collaboratively, one thing that honeybees have not been able to figure out on their own is how to protect themselves from the multiple factors including global heating, pesticide use, habitat loss, and parasites which have led to an estimated annual loss of over 30% of the honeybee colonies that are critical to pollinating one out of every three bites of the food we eat. According to the 2018-19 survey results from the Bee Informed Partnership, over the past winter, U.S. beekeepers lost 40% of their hives, which is the worst recorded loss since 2006.
It’s clear that when it comes to keeping global populations well-fed and environmental systems healthy and functioning, these tiny, brainy insects are the bee all end all. Whether you live in a big city, a small town, or somewhere in between, check out the Xerces Society’s tips on what to plant to create a safe haven for honeybees on your patch. You can also sponsor a hive through The Honeybee Conservancy and find Favorite World Press recommendations for pollinator-friendly seed bombs and supplies here.
