Bees!
Bees are some of nature's most impressive, most industrious, and most successful animals.
One can find most any bit of useful information on the world wide web. The information provided below will be sourced from one of our freely available databases, World Book Encyclopedia, opens a new window.
Bees are insects from the family hymenoptera, close relatives of wasps, hornets, and ants. Like all true insects, bees have six legs and an exoskeleton (rather than an endoskeleton -bones- like mammals and all vertebrates have). Bees, like most hymenopterans, are eusocial, living in massive colonies comprised of hundreds or thousands of individuals. The overwhelming majority of a bee colony are comprised of workers, with a smaller amount of breeding drones, and typically, a singular queen responsible for producing more bees.
Not all bees are eusocial, of course. Honey bees and bumblebees both live in rather large colonies, while carpenter bees and sweat bees are solitary.
Honeybees are among the most well studied of all insects. In the worlds of agriculture, they are one of a few insects that could be considered 'domesticated', with dedicated farms and farmers (beekeepers) who tend to and manage beehives. The product in question is the highly valuable and prized honey, which has been consumed and used by humans for thousands of years, as food, and for making other products, such a candles and sealing wax.
Bees are also extremely important as one of the chief sources of pollination. Pollination is the mechanism by which many plants and flowers use to reproduce and mature. Several species of plants have evolved alongside bees to require them as pollinators. Indeed, some of the most popular (and necessary) foods in the group require pollination via bees, opens a new window, such as apples, strawberries, almonds, peppers, and avocado, to name but a few.
While most bees are typically docile, some can be rather aggressive. The Africanized Honey Bee is a hybrid species, descended from the Western European Honey Bee and the East African lowland honey bee. This species can be rather aggressive, attacking anyone in their perceived territory, and chasing intruders quite far. While bee allergies do exist, even those without that unfortunate condition may find themselves in danger from a swarm of bees stinging you. One such movie, My Girl, from the early 1990s has an infamous scene involving bees that is not for the feint of heart.
In spite of this, bees remain incredibly important to our ecosystem, and a necessary animal we must tolerate, for good and ill.
Want to learn more about bees? Feel free to check out some of these items:
Save the Bees With Natural Backyard Hives
Happy reading!
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