Honeybees spend about 45 days as adults during the summer, and once they reach a certain age, they become what we call “foragers,” heading out of the hive to get to work.
The queen lays roughly 1,000 eggs a day, so, more or less, a thousand “sister” worker bees of the same generation reach the age when they are ready to head out and work outside the hive.
When a bee ventures outside the hive for the first time, she begins with what is called an “orientation flight.”
She hovers around the hive, gradually learning and memorizing the surrounding landscape.
Whenever we happen to witness this, we feel genuinely relieved.
And the jobs of these foragers are surprisingly diverse.
Of course, there’s finding flowers and bringing home nectar and pollen.
There’s also collecting resin-like substances from trees and bringing them back as propolis.
But that’s not all.
Some bees stand guard at the hive entrance.
Some respond to predators and other threats.
And some deal with intruders, literally dragging unwanted visitors out of the hive.
And then there’s one job we mustn’t forget:
fetching water.
Honeybees need a surprising amount of water.
They collect it from puddles, from grass and fallen leaves wet with rain or morning dew, from the walls of irrigation channels, and sometimes even from sandy beaches along the coast.
We’ve made a little watering station for them at BeeCamp, too.
The water they drink is stored temporarily in their “honey stomach”—the crop, where they also carry nectar—and transported back to the hive.
On hot summer days, they spread water around the entrance and fan it with their wings, helping the water evaporate and cool the inside of the hive.
It’s basically the honeybee version of uchimizu—the traditional Japanese practice of sprinkling water to cool things down.
It’s not particularly hot at this time of year, but the bees are still coming to collect quite a lot of water.
And then along comes the beekeeping old man, buzzing away with his lawnmower, mowing down the weeds around the hives.
Well…
The worker bees who had been quietly going about their water-collecting business get pretty angry.
And they know exactly where our weak spots are.
For example, they’ll make a beeline for the back of my hand—even through my work gloves.
When that happens, there’s really only one thing to do:
apologize sincerely and retreat.
Just because they’re quietly going about their work doesn’t mean we have the right to get in their way simply because it’s convenient for us.
We should remember that every one of them is putting her body on the line to do her job.
My sincerest apologies, ladies!