It’s spring time where I am in the northern
hemisphere, which means flowers are blooming and, very importantly, bees are buzzing. We’ve talked a lot about bees here on SciShow,
but we still always get more questions about bees and honey. We’re working on a new video about honey
that will come out in a couple weeks, but in the meantime, I wanted to share some of
our favorite bee and honey videos in case you missed them. This first one is four years old now, but
actually perfectly timed as we enter into another election season in the US. It’s another election year in the U.S.,
and watching all the politics on TV, it’s hard not to think, “There must be a better
way of doing this.” There is: the honeybee way. A beehive is actually one of the more awesome
examples of true democracy in nature. At the beginning of each summer, a hive has
typically gotten so big that it literally can’t accommodate another bee. So the biggest decision the colony has to
make every year is where to relocate, and that decision is made not by the queen, but
by the workers -- all non-reproductive females -- and everybody gets a vote. We think of bee colonies as being monarchies,
since they have something we call a queen. However, the queen doesn’t make many decisions
--she mostly just sits around laying eggs and producing pheromones that tell the workers
where she is and how she’s doing. So when the hive gets too crowded, about half
the worker bees, along with the queen, leave their home in search of new digs. This is called *swarming*: Thousands of bees
just leave all at once and hang out on a tree limb or something, forming a clump about the
size of a soccer ball. If you ever come across one of these clumps,
it’s okay--they’re not in a stinging mood. They have more important stuff on their minds. They need to find a new home: something high
off the ground, with a narrow opening and a lot of volume inside. And they need to find it quick. Of the thousands of workers in the swarm,
about 300-500 of the oldest, most experienced ones then leave to scout for nest sites. Each bee in the search committee spends a
day checking out tree cavities, abandoned chimneys, that sort of thing. And they take all kinds of measurements of
each potential site: its total volume, how much sun it gets, how protected it is from
the elements, etc. The really cool stuff happens when the scouts
come back. To convey all the specs of the sites they
just visited, each scout does a little display called a *waggle dance*, which tells the other
bees everything about it. Depending on how awesome the site is, a bee
might do the dance a bunch of times in a row so more bees can see it, or maybe just a few
times, in which case fewer will see it. For a really awesome site, she might spend
10 minutes doing her dance over and over, sort of like a bee filibuster. When other scouts see her dance, they go and
have a look for themselves and then come back. If they like it, they’ll dance for that
same site. Say the site is a really great one -- they’ll
dance just as long as the first bee did, which will catch other scouts’ attention, and
they’ll go look at the site and come back and give their opinion. All these votes start to snowball, and after
a couple of days, one site will come out above the rest. Not only is this really cool, but studies
of bee colonies over multiple years have found that 99% of the time, the bees end up choosing
the highest-quality nesting site available. The key to their success seems to be that
each bee comes to the conclusion about the site on her own: she goes out and looks at
it, takes her own measurements and comes back and votes. So Republicans and Democrats, take a tip from
the bees. From now on in politics, I want to see more
participation, more thinking for yourself -- and more interpretive dancing. We all know that bees make honey -- that sweet,
thick, liquid gold prized by tea-drinkers, bears, and honey badgers alike. But not all bees make honey. Insects like bumblebees, stingless bees and
even honey wasps can produce small amounts of honey, but the stuff you’re familiar
with is the product of one of the 7 species of true honeybees. Simply put, bees make honey as a source of
food security -- something to eat during times of scarcity, safely stored within the hive. And the responsibility for making this stockpile
falls to the female worker, or forager bees. They’re the ones who buzz from flower to
flower, sucking up sugary nectar with their long, tubular tongues, and they’re also
the ones who build and defend the hive, and take care of the queen. These hard-working ladies do it all while
the queen sits back and lays a ridiculous amount of eggs. Like seriously: Some scientists estimate that
a single queen can lay up to a quarter-million eggs in a single year, and more than a million
over her lifetime. Male drone bees, meanwhile, basically only
exist to mate with the queen then die. But I digress. So, a worker bee collects nectar and stores
it her crop -- which is sort of like an extra holding tank, also called the honey stomach,
designed just for this purpose. Once she’s back home, she passes her loot
along to another processor bee -- basically by puking it up into her mouth -- who then
then spits the nectar into a honeycomb cell. Every time that processor bee regurgitates
nectar into a storage cell, she adds a special enzyme called invertase. See, nectar is pretty much just sugar water,
and therefore perishable. But the invertase helps break that sucrose
down into simpler sugar molecules -- glucose and fructose -- eventually transforming it
into something that will hold up in long-term storage. At this point, the newly regurgitated nectar
is still quite runny. It’s got a water content of around 70 percent,
while honey has a water content of less than 19 percent. So to remove the extra water, these ingenious
little bees actually start fanning the honeycomb with their wings to get the evaporation process
cranking. Once the extra water has been fanned away
and the nectar has ripened into honey, the lady bees seal up those comb cells using a
beeswax secretion from their abdomens. When safely sealed away within the comb, honey
can basically last forever. Pretty sweet, huh? Assuming you don’t live under a rock, you’ve
probably heard about the sudden and mysterious drop in honeybee populations throughout the
US and Europe. Maybe you’ve even noticed fewer bees buzzing
around your neighborhood the last few summers. Beekeepers used to report average losses,
or “dwindlings,” in their worker bees of about 5-10% a year. But starting around 2006 that rate jumped
up to about 30%, and today the honey’s really hit the fan, with many big beekeeping operations
reporting that up to 40 or 50% of their swarms have mysteriously disappeared. This massive die-off of honeybee hives is
called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), and it’s a big, bad deal. When you hear people freak out about how important
bees are, you might think, yeah, I love honey too. But I’m here to tell you, honey is only
the sticky frosting on the massive cake bees serve us every day. For free. We don’t just need bees… we reallllllly
need bees. The US Department of Agriculture reports that
honeybee pollination is responsible for more than *$15 billion* in crops each year, and
that at least a *third of the food* you’re shoveling in your mouth is a direct or indirect
result of the pollinating that they do. Bees pollinate *over 90 flowering crops* in
the US, including apples, citrus fruits, asparagus, and soybeans. And no crop needs bees more than *almonds*,
which are pretty much totally dependent on them. When it’s pollinatin’ time in California,
farmers truck in*1.4 million bee colonies* -- about *60 percent of all professional bees*
in the country to almond groves. And yes, I said, *professional bees* -- there
are bees who earn money (for people) by doing what bees do. So you can imagine the economics that are
at stake here. The way Colony Collapse Disorder goes down
is reminiscent of a horror movie. A beekeeper toddles out to a colony and finds
only a few, if any, adult bees in the hive. But there are no dead bee bodies—just a
lonely live queen and her baby brood. Everyone else has vanished. Sometimes there’s still honey, and often
the place is lousy with Varroa [VAIR-oh-ah] mites, vampirish parasites that transmit viruses. You can see how the mites might be the prime
suspects here, but they’re probably only one factor in a combination of stressors -- including
habitat loss and synthetic chemicals -- that are joining forces to kill bees. These days commercial crops are soaked in
all manner of pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides. Analysts have documented about 150 different
chemical residues in beehives, and while on an individual level these substances may be
certified as non-lethal, there have been few studies on how they may react with each other,
and what consequences they may have. Many critics believe the nicotine-derived
pesticide neonicotinoids may be partially to blame. These “neonics” are systemic pesticides,
meaning they’re often embedded in the seeds of a plant, rather than sprayed on externally. Older pesticides killed bees , too, of course,
but they washed away or degraded quickly, whereas these neonics can persist for months,
and some beekeepers worry the build-up is contaminating, weakening, and ultimately poisoning
the worker bees that collect all the pollen. A study recently published in the journal
Science found bees given small doses of neonics were 2 to 3 times more likely to die while
away from the hive than control bees -- probably because the chemical messed with their *homing
abilities*, and they couldn’t find their way home. Most other research to date on neonics indicate
they are safe enough, but the sharp increase in their use since 2005 correlates with rising
CCD rates, so some critics are demanding more research. In fact, a coalition of beekeepers and consumer
and environmental groups is currently suing the EPA, saying they jumped the gun on approving
these products. And the European Union just voted to temporarily
ban the insecticide until more research can be done. Some farmers and chemical reps are ticked
off about the ban because they feel that at least for now, the science is on their side. The very fact that the issue has become so
political is a good indication of how terrified folks are of losing all the bees. Because really, we’d be seriously screwed
without them. So if you are out picnicking this summer,
and you see a bee taking liberties with a slice of your watermelon… for Pete’s sake
don’t swat the poor girl! She’s earned her taste, so be nice. We need all the bees we can get. Honeybees have a harsh caste system. Of the tens of thousands of bees found in
a hive, just about all of them are female workers, and they do pretty much /everything/,
from cleaning and building the hive to collecting pollen and nectar. Their lives are so intense that while a worker
can live from 4 to 9 months during the winter, a worker bee born in the busy summer season
will only last about 6 weeks before dying of exhaustion. It’s not a /whole/ lot better for the 300
to 3000 male drones, who basically hang around waiting to mate with a queen during the summer
-- after which they die -- or are kicked out of the hive when fall comes and they are of
no more use. Then there’s that queen. There’s one per hive, and she can live to
be up to five years old, laying up to 2,000 eggs in a day. And she owes her entire existence to a bitter,
protein-rich secretion called royal jelly. Given their long life and unique position,
there’s rarely a need for a new queen. But when one dies or leaves the hive along
with a swarm, the colony needs to find a replacement, and fast. In both situations, a larval bee is chosen
to become the new queen. The science of how and why this happens isn’t
entirely settled, but one thing is certain: royal jelly plays a large role. Worker bees produce royal jelly from a gland
in their heads, called the hypopharynx, and feed it to newly-hatched honeybee larvae. The milky, yellowish substance is made of
digested pollen and either honey or nectar. Not only is it high in protein, but royal
jelly also has a combination of vitamins -- especially Vitamin B -- plus lipids, sugars, hormones,
and minerals, including potassium, magnesium, calcium and iron. [image] The bee superfood also contains acetylcholine,
a neurotransmitter also found in humans. It’s what nerves use to tell muscles to
start or stop movement, and may also contribute to learning. All those nutrients might explain why royal
jelly is often marketed as an expensive dietary supplement cure-all, even though studies haven’t
been able to prove that it does anything too significant for humans- we are, after all,
not bees. But for bees, it does a lot. And around day three of the royal jelly diet
is where things get interesting. Worker bees will choose a few of the larvae
and continue to feed them royal jelly, while every other larva is switched to a less nutrient-intensive
diet of honey, pollen, and water. As the future queens gorge, the royal jelly
triggers other phases of development that workers don’t experience, like the formation
of ovaries for laying eggs. If one queen emerges first, she’ll search
for and destroy any other queens still developing in their wax cells. And if multiple queens come out simultaneously,
they will fight to the death until only one queen remains. Now, we don’t know exactly how the worker
bees decide which larvae get the royal treatment, but for a long time, they thought it was random. That would make sense, because basically worker
bees and queen bees are genetically identical. But there’s some evidence that the selection
of a queen might not actually be so random. A 2011 study found the larvae of future queens
have higher levels of proteins that increase some metabolic activities. So there may indeed by a tiny genetic difference
in the two that plays a huge role. Scientists are also still trying to figure
out what it is about the royal jelly that lets it change a larva’s whole life. For a while, we thought it might’ve been
a hormone in the jelly, or the way it affected insulin signals in the larvae. Then, another 2011 study zeroed in on a protein
called royalactin, which, when isolated and combined with other nutrients, can transform
larvae into queens, just like royal jelly. Once they emerge, queens continue eating royal
jelly their entire lives. And given that the queen lives a lot longer
than the thousands of relatives around her, it sounds like a reasonable dietary choice
for a royal bee to make. Bees. So weird and awesome. We love researching and talking about them,
so let us know if you have questions about bees or honey, or anything at all in the comments
below. Thanks for watching this SciShow compilation
and thanks especially, to our patrons on Patreon.
About a week's worth of #BeeFacts delivered in thirteen bang-bang minutes!
Really cool.