Bees-updated

 A crab apple tree in front of the house is blooming now, offering nectar and pollen to insects, concealment for bird nests, then food in the winter when the berries are consumed mostly by starlings. The blossoms are short lived and fragile, and rarely last more than a week, but several species of bumblebees, leaf cutting bees, sweat bees, honeybees and flies pollinate them during that time. While there is a lot of press about the decline of honeybees, in my experience it is the bumblebees that do most of the pollinating for many of the wild and domestic flowers;                                                                          If they disappear the true contributions they provide will be noticed. 

     Bumblebee hives do not overwinter, so every spring a new queen who had sheltered in the ground or behind tree bark must start a new hive. That means finding a suitable place-usually underground-making comb cells, laying eggs and foraging for pollen and nectar with which to feed the larvae, until finally new worker bees emerge to expand the hive until autumn, when all of them die except a new queen who starts the process over. All summer those workers are pollinating many of the flowers we see along roadsides and in gardens, and while it can appear to be a thankless task for a hive that dies every year, that is natures
                                                      way. As human beings we should be appreciative I think.

         Below is a reprint of an experiment demonstrating the bumblebee ability to learn from observation, as published in Science magazine in 2017... Bumblebees are Not stupid insects deserving of the scorn some people give them...                                                                                              "The second experiment involved a platform on which rested three balls at various distances from the center. Bees were then presented with one of three different training scenarios: a trained bee that moved the furthest ball to the center, a magnet that could move the furthest ball to the center, or no training where just one ball was presented and placed in the center of the platform. The bees were then tested to see if they could accomplish the task of moving one of three balls to the center to receive a drop of sugar solution.

The results reveal that the bees were on average more successful when trained by other bees than with the magnet and that both were more effective than no training, with success rates of around 99%, 78% and 34% respectively. Intriguingly, unlike the demonstrations, the bees generally chose to move the ball closest to the center, a result that held even when that ball was black rather than yellow.

“This means that the bees didn’t just simply copy the demonstrator and could improve upon the demonstrator’s technique or strategy,” said Loukola. “The fact that they saw the task in different ways than the demonstrator shows a very impressive amount of cognitive flexibility.”

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