Bee Buzzzz!!!!

National Honey Bee Day, an awareness day started by beekeepers in the United States to build community awareness of the bee industry, through education and promotion is celebrated in August with a simple concept of bringing together beekeepers, bee associations as well as other interested groups to connect with the communities to advance beekeeping.

The little creatures have extraordinary abilities and benefits for humans. Read on for some fascinating facts on the buzzing bugs!!!

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1. Apis mellifera or the honey bee has been around for millions of years, classified as insects are environmentally friendly and are super important pollinators for flowers, fruits and vegetables.
2. Honey bees have 6 legs, 5 eyes (2 compound eyes made of thousands of tiny lenses, one on each side of the head and 3 simple eyes on the top of the head), 2 pairs of wings, a nectar pouch and a stomach.

3. Honey bees have serious sense of smell!!! They have 170 odorant receptors and have the ability to differentiate hundreds of different floral varieties. Their exceptional olfactory abilities include kin recognition signals, social communication within the hive, and odor recognition for finding food.
4. The honey bee's wings stroke incredibly fast, about 200 beats per second, thus making their famous, distinctive buzz. A honey bee can fly for up to six miles, and as fast as 15 miles per hour.
5. The bee's brain is oval in shape and only about the size of a sesame seed, yet it has remarkable capacity to learn and remember things and is able to make complex calculations on distance travelled and foraging efficiency.
6. Honey bees live in hives (or colonies). The members of the hive are divided into three types:
Queen: One queen runs the whole hive and can live upto 5 years. Her job is to lay the eggs that will spawn the hive’s next generation of bees.
If she uses stored sperm to fertilize the egg, the larva that hatches is female. If the egg is left unfertilized, the larva that hatches is male. In other words, female bees inherit genes from their mothers and their fathers while male bees inherit only genes from their mothers.
The queen also produces chemicals that guide the behaviour of the other bees.
Workers: these are all female, live upto 6 weeks and their roles are to forage for food (pollen and nectar from flowers), build and protect the hive, clean and circulate air by beating their wings. Workers are the only bees most people ever see flying around outside the hive. All work, no play!!!
Drones: These are the male bees, and their purpose is to mate with the new queen. Several hundred live in each hive during the spring and summer. But come winter, when the hive goes into survival mode, the drones are kicked out! No work at all!!!

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7. The worker bees produce honeycomb which comprises hexagon shaped cells through the consumption of honey produced from the collected flower nectar. To produce one pound of beeswax, six to eight pounds of honey are ingested. Bees have special glands on their stomach that secrete the wax into little wax pockets on their stomach. The bee takes the wax and chews it with her mandibles and shapes it to make honeycomb.

8. Royal Jelly is a milky substance produced in a special gland in the worker bee's head. For her whole life the Queen is fed Royal Jelly by the workers.
9. Propolis is a sticky substance that bees collect from the buds of trees. Bees use propolis to weatherproof their hive against drafts or in spots where rain might leak in.
10. The average worker bee produces about 1/12th teaspoon of honey in her lifetime. It takes one ounce of honey to fuel a bee's flight around the world.
11. A single beehive can make more than 100 pounds (45 kg) of extra honey. The beekeeper only harvests the extra honey made by the bees.
12. During winter, honey bees feed on the honey they collected during the warmer months. They form a tight cluster in their hive to keep the queen and themselves warm.
13. It is the only insect that produces food (honey) eaten by man. Honey is the only food that includes all the necessary substances to sustain life like enzymes, vitamins, mineral and is the only food that contains “pinocembrin”, an antioxidant associated with improved brain functioning.
14. Bees carry pollen on their hind legs called a pollen basket. Pollen is a source of protein for the hive and is needed to feed to the baby bees to help them grow.
15. Each honey bee colony has a unique odour for members' identification.

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16. Bees communicate through chemical scents called pheromones and through special bee dances. Brilliant boogiers!!!

17. Honey has natural preservatives and bacteria can't grow in it.
18. Honey was found in the tombs in Egypt and it was still edible! Bees have been here around 30 million years.

Source: www.bestanimations.com

19. Honey comes in different colours and flavours. The flower where the nectar was gathered from determines the flavour and colour of the honey.

20. Sadly, over the past 15 years, colonies of bees have been disappearing, and the reason remains unknown. Referred to as 'colony collapse disorder', billions of Honey bees across the world are leaving their hives, never to return.

References: 

http://www.benefits-of-honey.com/honey-bee-facts.html

http://www.ontariohoney.ca/kids-zone/bee-facts

New Castle and District Beekeepers' Association

National Geographic

Happy Independence Day!!!

On the occasion of our 70^th Independence Day, we as environmentalists should talk of something related to environment. We all know the tiger strength is directly related to the state of environment and it is also our national animal.

In 1947, the estimated number of tigers was around 40 thousand which reduced gradually and in the last decades there was drastic fall, the reasons being destruction of their habitat and illegal poaching. Then came the good news, as per latest official count, India is home to 2,226 tigers, representing 70% of the global population of the endangered big cats. In the last two years, the number has risen significantly and this is the result of what we are doing for the last 12 years. “We have zero tolerance towards poaching”, Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar said at the inauguration of the 3rd Asia ministerial conference on tiger conservation. Highlighting the need for protecting tiger corridors, he announced incentivising project proponents to give land for compensatory afforestation in Tiger corridors.

On one hand, when a news of discovering pug marks of an adult tiger and a cub fuelled hopes of forest department officials at Nagarahole National Park of finding the missing tigress, who abandoned her three cubs alive. On the other hand, we learn about the death of two cubs due to starvation and the most tragic news of a tiger found shot in Bandipur National Park raising the spectre of poachers in one of the best protected tiger reserve in the country.

The rise in number and the success of tiger conservation offers us great hope that we can save species if Government, local people and conservationists work together to educate people and show zero tolerance towards poaching. This is refreshing, but it has to be a continued effort which is possible only if we all work together in this field.

We at Environ India are optimistic that our nation will awake and arise again this time in defiance of all the evils of the society!!

May we have a safe and happy world for all !!

Happy Independence Day Folks!!