Prior to Tuesday morning, if someone had for some inexplicable reason asked if I knew anything about honey- bees, I might have tried to sup- press a smug little grin, taken a deep breath, puffed out my chest, straightened my back and announced boldly \u2014 while attempting to sound modest \u2014 \u201ca little.\u201d<\/p>\n
After all, I would have rationalized, my wife, Stephanie, has been a hobby beekeeper for more than six years during which time I\u2019ve helped as much as possible; I\u2019ve even taken the Iowa Honeybee Producer Association\u2019s six-week beekeeping class to learn more about beekeeping; and I\u2019ve probably read more about bees than most typical Iowans.<\/p>\n
I could have rattled off a number of basic facts about honeybees, such as each colony may have upwards of 60,000 to 80,000 bees, only one of which is the queen; male bees, called drones, serve only one purpose, which is to mate with other queens and once that task is completed they die; and that all the thousands of \u201cworker\u201d bees in a colony are females.<\/p>\n
If you opened a hive I could help you pick out the queen from amongst the thousands of other bees. She\u2019s larger than the others and usually quite distinguishable because of her shiny, brighter golden color. What I didn\u2019t know before Tuesday was that the reason she appears to be a different color is that although the queen starts out her adult life just like all the other bees covered by thousands of tiny hairs that are used for, among other things, the pollen gathering process, in the queen\u2019s case the hairs are all worn off by the constant grooming she undergoes by a cadre of some 1,300 bees devoted exclusively to her well-being.
\nThat was just one of many insights about honeybees that Carly Raye Vannoy explained to some 40 attendees at Story County Conservation\u2019s Older Wiser Livelier Seniors program Tuesday at McFarland Park. Vannoy is the Iowa Honey Producers Association\u2019s 2017 Iowa Honey Queen and travels the state as a sort of good-will ambassador for honeybees.<\/p>\n
Before hearing Vannoy\u2019s remarkable presentation \u2014 she\u2019s a home-schooled high school senior from Urbandale who speaks with the ease, confidence and assurance of a college student working on a doctoral thesis in apiology \u2014 I could have described the honey- bees\u2019 waggle dance, which a worker bee performs in the company of the entire colony after finding an ample resource of nectar or pollen that she wants help gathering. However, what I didn\u2019t know after the worker bee makes its discovery and does its \u201cbee line\u201d directly back to the colony is that as she communicates to her sister bees in the total darkness of the hive they gather the information not from any smells or sounds she makes, but rather by vibrations they feel being emitted by the exuberant bee performing her dance.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf she finds a patch of dandelions two miles south of the conservation center and goes back to the hive to tell the rest of the bees, once she starts the waggle dance they know exactly where they\u2019re supposed to go,\u201d Vannoy said.<\/p>\n
Here are a few other fun facts from her presentation:<\/p>\n
Now you and I both know \u201ca little\u201d more about honeybees. Pretty sweet, huh?<\/p>\n
Todd Burras can be reached at outdoorstoddburras@ gmail.com.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Prior to Tuesday morning, if someone had for some inexplicable reason asked if I knew anything about honey- bees, I might have tried to sup- press a smug little grin, taken a deep breath, puffed out my chest, straightened my back and announced boldly \u2014 while attempting to sound modest \u2014 \u201ca little.\u201d After all, … <\/p>\n