BEE here now

So what is up with the honeybees? Nobody really knows the answer to reports of honeybees disappearing and chronic colony collapse from all points in the world, but there are plenty of theories. Of course you could keep your own posse of honeybees in your living room in the manner that a bee colony is displayed in the Cockrell Butterfly Center at the Houston Museum of Natural Science.
The beehive is mounted on a stand and enclosed behind clear panels through which you can view the bees on both sides. At the bottom a wooden duct leads out of the tropical environment of the butterfly center, through the wall and spills outside. A quick glance through the window shows bees coming and going around the tunnel entrance. The honeybees fly off and gather pollen that they bring back to the colony and apply to the octagonal cells of the hive. The entrance to the bee tunnel is guarded against errant wasps or other invaders by a couple of beefy bees.
“The tunnel entrance was much bigger but our bee keeper told us to make it smaller to make it easier for the them to defend” HMNS staffer Nancy Greig tells Free Press Houston.
“Bees were brought to America in the 1600s by Europeans,” Greig continues. The Indians called the buzzing insect white man’s flies. There are several kinds of bees, not just honeybees, but bumblebees and carpenter bees among many others. Greig notes that there is no such thing as a killer bee, just strains of bees that are more aggressive than normal. Because of the recent missing bee occurrences whenever swarms are reported, say in abandoned buildings, the hives are relocated instead of being destroyed.
Continuing to look at the hive the sameness of all the bees begins to fade and individual bees begin to appear unique. Some of the honeybees are doing the waggle dance, where they wiggle their rears back and forth. The speed and direction of their movement communicates to their brethren how far and where the pollen is located. Some of the honeybees carry visible crumbs of pollen that they are putting in the cells.
The queen seems mired among the thousand or so insects on view in the observation hive. Eventually she stands out due to her large abdomen. She’s laying eggs in one of the cells. The males can be spotted with their large thorax region; the females a thousand to one outnumber them.
Nobel prize winner in medicine Karl von Frisch studied bees and a link to one of his Nobel lectures on the language of bees can be found on the web resource after this article.
“People don’t realize how important bees are to the food system,” notes Greig. Bees pollinate most of the foods we eat. We discuss the news stories that attribute the honeybee disappearance to everything from pollution and insecticide to cell phones. Nobody really knows, and maybe it’s combination of all of the above.
An alternative food source, perhaps not for the squeamish, are edible insects. Near a separate basement display of bees is a vending machine with larvae, crickets and other munchable insects. Will America’s love affair with burgers and fries be supplanted with crispy scorpions and bread with butter and ants? The local restaurant Hugo’s (1602 Westheimer) serves crickets. One of their managers explains by phone that such appetizers are a treat at high-end restaurants in Mexico. Surely you know about the worm at the bottom of the bottle. Hugo’s crickets are imported.


Internet Bee Resource:

nobel lecture on bees