Thursday Seeds | Bees and Queens

In a true bee hive, the queen is the priority. In her leading, the bees are the priority. She must put forth all she has to keep the hive growing and healthy. This means an attitude of humility and sacrifice too.

Make babies, make food, make a house. These sound familiar? A human family unit might be similar, though not the same.

Are their two queen bees? That spells trouble. It also could mean a split of the hive. Now instead of one, there are two with room to grow. Is there a pain in letting go? In the separation of the hive, does morale dip? How could humans arrive at a hive and even measure this?

Is this going too deep down a fairytale path? maybe. Going there anyway.

The queens are leading. Is their management style different from hive to hive? Deep encouragers would thrive (like I’d want them to.) The micro-managed ones would struggle. The ones that didn’t have resilience or good knowledge of which plants could help in the balance? Have you ever seen a honey bee go for echinacea? Is it as good for bees as it is for humans? Maybe better. (I don’t know the science) What of these elderflowers or elderberries that sit in their umbel shape? They could provide healing too.

Which bees would nap in the night on a flower? There are photographic shots of this behavior. It seems new. Have they always done that? Are their behaviors different because of the need for change? maybe.

Do they behave different due to seasonal changes? Autumn duties are different than Spring duties. Are they like the Japanese with 52 seasons? (link for an article here) I was taught in school about four seasons. I still have childhood books with the art of those seasons and how they relate to bears. (Was that honey hive realistic in there? never mind.)

Does a queen bee steer clear of the hard subjects when she has her weekly meeting with the drone bees? Is there an up tick on lost bees? Is it the result of not enough room in the hive? Was there a flood, a fire, other type disaster via disease? How many hard decisions are the queen bees having to decide? They don’t get together and decide. We know that there can only be one or the hive splits. (help of humans or no)

The ecosystems of our planet rely on these systems that I’m very blasé writing about. Maybe we should know more…

These are a few snapshots from some hives that I can experience at a local community farm and park. The amount of bees on the outside of the first box is 3x what it was in the spring. And the second box didn’t have any bees on the outside at all. Nope, I’ve never seen the insides unless it’s an online video. I’m sure that would give me the logic of it but would it give me the whole experience of standing in front of them for the first time experiencing them? likely not.

If you wanted to visit a bee hive this year, where would you go?