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Chippy Meets Buzzy the Bee     
  Hi Kids,

Welcome to Bird Watching Time with Chippy (That’s me!) I am happy that you are joining me in my Bird watching time every month. And this month, I have a surprise for you! Yes, my friend “Buzzy the Bee” is joining me and we are going to discuss about birds, animals and other species! Our friend is coming now. Could you hear her buzzing?

(Buzzy comes there.)

Copyrighted image of Digitalfrescos.com            Hi Chippy!

Hi Buzzy! Copyrighted image of Digitalfrescos.com

Chippy: Hi Buzzy,  Happy to see you again, how do you do?

Buzzy : Hello my friend, I’m fine! You too are looking good!

Chippy: Yes my friend! I need some information on bees, could you share some facts on bees for the kids?

Buzzy : With pleasure my friend! What do you want to know?

Chippy: OK, First tell me, how many different kinds of bees are there?

Buzzy : There are nearly 20000 bee varieties in our family. We are living in all the continents except Antarctica.

Chippy: Wow! What an amazing creature, you are! Tell something about your living place.

Buzzy : As you know, bees live in hives. They are made up of beeswax, a special fluid formed by our body. This is where we keep our larva, our nectar and where 10,000 to 60,000 bees live. Some bees live as solitary bees. They live alone and build their own nests separately.

Chippy: Amazing! That’s so many bees! How do you collect honey from flowers?

Buzzy: That is not honey we are  collecting. That is nectar. The female worker bees go to flowers, collect the nectar and save in the honey combs. During the process, we also pollinate them. ‘Pollinating’ means that we help plants make seeds using pollen. A good harvesting of flowers and grains depends on pollination rate. You know, farmers have bee hives in their farm to increase their food production. By this way, we help humans too.

Our “Honey Making” process is an interesting one. We drink the nectar from the flowers and we reach our hive. There, we regurgitate the nectar, that means food is stored for some time in our stomach and released out from our mouth. This undigested liquid is now called, honey. Actually, the nectar could only become honey when it is added with fructose and glucose from our digestive system. We store the pollen and honey in the beehives. The beeswax and pollen give the yellowish shade to our beehive.

Chippy: mm.. interesting, you are serving the human society too, right?

A modern bee hive in a farm

Buzzy : Yes, the beekeeping, apiculture is an interesting business. We are very helpful to the humans by providing them the products live beeswax, honey, pollen and royal jelly. Thanks to modern methods, our colony will not be destroyed to get honey. Safe honey collecting methods are followed by beekeepers and honey is extracted from the honeycomb without harming us. We will refill the honey combs once again. Honey is a safe food for humans, that is used for medicinal purposes too.

Chippy: Yes, I agree. Are you a worker bee or the queen?

Buzzy : I am a worker bee. I like to work always. I help to build the bee hive too. I serve the queen bee and help her to raise their daughters and participate in the protection of my colony.

Chippy: Superb! Tell me about your life style.

Buzzy: We live in wild bees colonies. Nowadays, we live in the honey combs designed by humans too. They give a safe place to live and we provide honey and other products to them. They will take the honey from our hive and leave some of them for us to survive in future.

In a bee colony, a group of bees (swarm) has a queen bee, daughter bees or worker bees and the male bees called drones.The queen bee will raise their daughters and worker bees will do the duties in their entire life. The male – drone bees helps to maintain the population and they do not act as worker bees, they don’t have stings too. The adult queen bees will leave our colony and she will create a new one. The solitary bees such as carpenter and mason bees live in their own nests. They live separately with their own family. They won’t produce honey and beeswax.

Bee-eater catching a bee.

Chippy: Isn’t it? Do you have enemies?

Buzzy : Yes, many… One of them is the bee eater. Dragonflies, bee-wolves and some other insect predators are our enemies. Other pests include the Tracheal and Varroa mites and the wax moth. Old methods followed by some humans to take honey from our hive, are also dangerous to our lives.

Chippy: mm… OK! Do you have any special communication style?

Buzzy : Yes, one of the most fun thing is the bee dance that share some news to other bees. We have two types of it- the waggle dance and the round dance.The round dance communicates that a good source of nectar is nearby and it is a short version of the waggle one. The waggle dance gives signs to other bees that an abundant food source is available around the place.

Chippy: Really interesting, how could you protect yourself from danger?

Buzzy : Stings are our only weapons to fight enemies. We have poisonous glands in our body near the stings, and when we bite the poison is also injected and its causes pain to the enemies.

(Buzzy hears her friend’s Buzz…)

Copyrighted image of Digitalfrescos.com

 

BuzzY: OK, my dear friend.. It’s time to say goodbye! I have to go to collect some nectar.

Chippy: Thanks for sharing all these information, my friend! Next month, I will discuss more with you! See you! Bye! Bye!

(Buzzy flies away. Buzzzzzzzzzzz…….)

Chippy: Bye Kids! Will see you by next month.. Bye!

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