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01 June 2010
If you’ve been to the Farm during this past month, you know that things are buzzing in yet one more way. We now have hives of honey bees on site! Earlier last month month, Chris Burley added a green hive to the site, and San Francisco Bee-Cause (SFBC) moved the first two of six colorful hives to the site. SFBC is a new non-profit (http://www.sfbeecause.org), a Farm partner, and will be offering bee and beekeeping related workshops and classes at the Farm. The first workshop "Intro to Beekeeping" will be on Sunday, June 6.
You are welcome to watch the bees come and go from their hives, but don’t stand in front of a hive or otherwise block the bees’ various flight paths (e.g., their “bee lines”).
If you do, the bees will fly right into you. Usually, that won’t be a problem unless they fly into your hair. In that case, they will sting. Something primal takes over when a bee gets into hair – human or animal. They embark on an “altruistic suicide” mission, thinking you are a hairy honey bee predator (a bear, skunk or other furry critter).
Instead, stand to one side of a hive to watch their comings and goings at the hive entrance. Watch for the different colors of pollen they are collecting in their pollen baskets (corbiculae). Right now, you are likely to the bees bringing in a greyish-white, and at least three different colors of yellow pollen. Once in a while, you may even see dark brown-red, red and orange pollens.
Why do bees collect pollen? Pollen is food for the bees – their source of proteins, minerals, vitamins and fats. What are the source flowers of the various colors of pollen? Only the bees know. However, we expect they will be visiting the fava bean flowers all over the Farm. Watch to see if they are collecting pollen or just nectar from these flowers.
One of the many reasons that honey bees are such favored pollinators for agriculture is their “flower fidelity.” After a worker bee is 3 weeks old, she graduates from being a “house bee” to a “field bee.” As a field bee, she begins to seek out flowers for their pollen and nectar. The first flower she finds that provides a good source of pollen or nectar is the kind of flower she will keep trying to find until she cannot find it any more. That is why the pollen each bee brings into her hive is a single color, rather than multi-colored. Only when the bee cannot find that same flower any more will she then go to another flower and stay “true” to that type of flower until she cannot find it any more. By staying “true” to the same type of flower, this evolutionary feature of the honey bee ensures she spreads the pollen of like flowers to like flowers, thereby maximizing reproduction of each type of plant she visits.
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