Honey bee - the social entrepreuner

Introduction:

I availed a brief sabbatical holiday (meaning escape from Little Typhoon’s barrage of inquisitive questions) and used it to get in to the subject matter of our last encounter – the Bee, honey and the beehive. Is this not rhyming with the famous Bollywood film Roti, kapda aur machhan?

I resolved not to entertain oral exchanges but to make her read the narration, without questioning my grasp on the subject. Here I am on a safe wicket – LT has to wait a few years, at least, to go through the printed matter, provided the memory of the sting still remains fresh in her mind.

Notwithstanding this, I owe her a “thank you” note – for making me to gather these informations from various publicized accounts.

Part – 1: The honey

The continent, which introduced the concept of ‘zero’ to mathematics, also has this distinction - according to fossil logs, the first of honey bees might have operated their mithai shops, here in Asia several million years ago.

Honey is a sweet and natural product, combining the flora and insecta origins. Plants and the sterile female worker bees are JV partners in converting plant secretions, honeydew and nectar through the refining laboratories of the bees – a quid pro quo of a sweeter kind.

Nectar and flavour by any other name means the same anywhere in the world. But honey, by taste and flavour, may not be the same everywhere in the world. This depends on the source accreditation of the product- wild or domestic; hot or a cold climate and a host of other conditions that lend the flavour and taste to this produce.

                           

The taste, flavour and composition of the honey vary as in the case of vines.  The connoisseur/expert/authority can put his fingers, in this case his nose and taste buds, unerringly on factors such as soil, location, climate, plant source, season, processing methods and storage conditions to appraise the quality.

The bee plays its part – seeking the juicy nectar sporting a prescription UV glasses for reading the blueprint. They never got tired of playing this game for over several million of years, give or take a few years spent in devising the game. 

   

Though they are JV partners, the flowers do not give open access to the raw material- nectar. Like booting of a computer system, series of regulatory checks are to be completed. The flower plays a little game by hiding nectar, anther and stamen in the darkest, central park.

The honey bee steps in to the house of nectar and as soon as its legs land on a “honey trap” mat- literally the honey bee swipes a biological admit card. After verification, the mat bends down triggering the mature anthers also to bend forward and sprinkle ‘pollen grains’ in a traditional welcoming style. Then as a seasoned hostess, the flower serves a dish of sweet nectar, as quid pro quo, to the guest of honour.

Production of pollen, pollination and propagation is the life cycle of a plant. The flower does not mind the revisits by the same honey bee a million times and every time plays the part of a perfect hostess. Collection of nectar, converting it to honey and proliferation is a life cycle for the honey bee. This inter & intra relationships, with out courtships are selfish and benefitting mutually.

Otherwise, will the flower welcome the bee or will the bee visit the flower again and again?

Honey bees are fond of dancing and perform it with out the help of a choreographer, practice sessions or rehearsals. They use different types of ‘bee natyams’ and ‘mudras’- waggle, tremble and round dance to GPS with each other- according to the nature of information such as availability of nectar, quality, distance and direction to the Garden of Flowers. 

They don’t look for a stage to perform but do it right in the air and while in flight. The worker’s special –tremble dance is performed solely for the purpose of calling in volunteers to collect the nectar brought by the foragers.

‘Nectar in the mouth is not the same as the honey in the comb’. What a poignant statement from the house of the industrious insects!  They use digestive and regurgitation techniques to promptly convert the gathered nectar in to honey, using inversion enzymes.

The bees store the processed honey in a viscous liquid form, as absorbate in the numerous cells cum passages cum living holes – the unique hexagonal shapes.

The energy we derive or the honey gives out is based on the saccharides or sugars – fructose, glucose and sucrose. Their chemical structure might be complicated but the sweeter taste is simple. To add ‘zing’ to the taste, smaller constituents such as acids, proteins, oxidase enzymes, minerals and moisture are present rendering honey slightly acidic and to go well with our alkaline taste buds.

The produce of the honey bees and the anatomy of a particular type of ants have been put to important usages, by the Ayurvedic surgeons, in operations to treat general and war wounds. The surgeons applied honey, as a lure, on the incisions that are to be stitched and placed a specially reared species of ants on to them.

 The ants, in their eagerness to taste the sweetish offering, dug in their cutters on either side of the open lesion. The moment the ant starts feasting, the waiting surgeon applied a guillotine at its neck, expertly severing the rest of its body. The surgeon repeated this exercise till the wound was closed against internal infection. The ‘cutters’ of those ants were a cutting edge tool in the operative care of patients!

On the part of the ant, it was an act of supreme sacrifice to save a human life.

Apart from this important use in surgical procedures, the honey was a preferred vehicle to deliver medicines. A household without a bottle of honey and a grandmother was the rarest of a rare case, in those days and in those villages where Gandhiji’s young India lived. Be it a potion for fever, aches, de-worming or a laxative or a bitter pill – honey had a hand in all of them.

It also found use in the cosmetic formulations - mixed along with herbal and aromatic pastes as beauty aides, for the fair and lovelies of ancient kingdoms.

Even among this society of insects- which produce “honey”, fake actors are present. They also produce honey, but could not capture a share of the consumer market or get settled in apiaries, like honey bees. Only the genuine process and product qualifies for certification.       

 If the honey bees apply for it, they will gladly be given an ISO certification, in no time, for their traditional, systematic way of production and storage.

      

Any one serving the society at large, even with selfish motives can be considered as a social worker.  In this respect, this species of honey bees have been exemplary: ‘if a flower needs a visit, we will be there; if a drop of honey is to be made we will gladly do it;’

These tireless workers have been immortalized with a place in the Heavens. Astronomers have named a nebula (honey bee) and a star cluster (beehive cluster) to commemorate their dedication, for many more millions of years to come.