THE POLLINATORS, follows migratory beekeepers and their truckloads of honeybees as they pollinate the crops we all eat. The challenges that beekeepers and their bees face in their travels reveal the flaws to our simplified, chemically dependent agriculture system. Director Peter Nelson recently talked with Bill Moyers and provided us with bee facts we are pretty sure will be new to you.
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Honey bees are eusocial and a considered a super organism, ie a complex social structure of integrated individuals better treated as a one organism. A single bee won’t survive long on its own. Other super organisms are ants and termites.
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Honey bees secrete wax from special glands in their abdomen to create honey comb which is used to store honey and pollen and a place for the queen to lay eggs for new bees.
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A honey bee will visit 50-100 flowers during a collection trip and will fly up to 5 miles to forage. But, they only as far as they have to.
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Honey bees use an elaborate ‘waggle’ dance to communicate the precise location (distance and directions) and density of flowers to other foraging bees in the hive.
It is National Pollinator Week: Save the BEES!
