so when you walk around the countryside and you see flowers there's a very good
chance you're going to see bees and other insects on them what
you're looking at here is a solitary native bee getting pollen
and nectar from a sunflower here's another native bee
known as the bumble bee look how big she is
she's also collecting nectar and getting pollen
to lay her eggs and develop her own young through the growing year
now there is a social bee that is non-native
that we've brought to the united states that we use to get resources such as
honey and beeswax that would be
this little forager known as the honeybee
just got visited by that bumblebee at the bottom there
they have fur all over their bodies which helps them collect
pollen from the flowers they visit as they fly through the air the hairs on
their body develop static and when they land on
these flowers in this case sunflowers this native pollinator is moving that
pollen off of her hair to her hind legs and has
what we call pollen pants see to be rubbing all of
that bright yellow pollen that she's going to use to develop her young as
well back to this bumblebee there are over 20
000 species of bees in the world here's another native pollinator she's a
solitary bee but some bees are social and social bees
have the ability to develop a perennial nest of comb
that allows them to exist for years and even through winter
and that would be this little honeybee honeybees are managed by people for the
most part although they can be found in tree
hollows this particular one lives in a hive
hives are kept by beekeepers she's known as apis
melifera so this is the domestic or managed honeybee she has pollen on
her hind legs to feed her brood and develop
her baby replacement bees and she also has
a honey crop full of nectar that she's going to bring back
and that provides the energy the bees need
in that hive in order to raise their young
everyone needs a break once a while and this
bumblebee is taking a break on the sunflower leaf
often you find them early in the morning just like this
resting up for the day now this is a honey
bee that it's collecting just pollen sometimes when you stop and take a close
look you'll see the pollen flipping into the air there
collecting on her body hairs and then she will groom it back as she is here
to her hind legs so that she can carry them back to the hive
and again this bee will enter the hive communicate to the other bees through a
waggle dance where she found this valuable pollen
resource so that others can go out and get some
too it's another female foraging honeybee
who's at the edge of a pond this bee collects water for the hive
the water is stored in her honey crop this is an
older bee and she does not visit flowers she only collects water water has many
purposes in the hive she can go in and spread it across the
brewed frames and then they evaporated off by fanning
their wings and cooling the hive when it's necessary
she can also bring it in extend her tongue as she is here
and let other bees share in the water that they need if they've not left the
hive yet so this is one of the last jobs in a
bee's life that they have and they like places like this pond with
the algae there because there are a lot of other
minerals in this water which they all need
also while this bee is collecting water it gives us a chance to look closely at
the hairs all over her body bees have compound
eyes and three acella the eyes are in between
these two large compound eyes so bees actually have
five eyes now they forage for miles and they have to find their way back
home and these bees are coming and going from an apiary
which is what's known as a bee yard they have to return to the hive that they
departed from and they memorized their locations
they note landmarks like the trees next to the hive that they live in
what direction the landing board faces the color of the hive the configuration
like these high visors that are on the front even colors
are noticed by the bees as they come and go
now we're seeing these bees at a very slow
speed so that you can really get a look at how they fly
and how they come and go through the lower entrance of this beehive
inside this hive they live in total darkness
we're going to take a look inside to see how they've arranged their comb
and what happens in there there are three casts of bees living here
one is the queen all the workers that we see here have come from a single queen
although on rare occasions there could be two queens
laying eggs for the same hive the male bees are known as drones they have
large eyes on their head that come together at the top which helps them
see virgin queens their whole job is to mate
now we see this full speed so you can appreciate
the pace of the work that's going on in a beehive
coming and going during daylight hours at night
they don't fly they simply can't see well enough
now we're inside the hive and we're looking at the upper portion
which is where they've stored their honey it's capped with beeswax
that's why it looks white they're hexagonal cells
and the foraging bees bring back the nectar from the field and pass it on to
another bee who then places the nectar inside the
cells the bees will fan their wings and
dehydrate it down until it is well below 19 water they've also amended the nectar
with their own mandibular material and their antibacterial properties
that keep the honey from spoiling honey has a unique flavor based on the
flowers that it was derived from so foraging bees really do choose
what the honey's going to be composed of here we have a quick look at the queen
she's moving across brood frames and this queen will lay
up to her body weight and eggs every single day
usually over a thousand eggs a day those eggs hatch in three days and
become larva and after their larva state they get
capped they become pupa and an adult bee hatches 21 days
after the egg is laid which means during the productive times of the year
there are more than a thousand new bees hatching out
every single day this is a close look at the larvae
remember after the third day an egg hatches
and it gets fed by the nurse bees they all start out on a mix of royal jelly
and the worker bees then get something known as bee bread
which is developed from the pollen that they've stored and fermented
some of these bees are not working very hard right now
remember that they do take breaks from time to time and here's a look at the
brewed comb this is the nursery inside the hive
look at the thousands of capped cells ready to hatch out
then we look through the comb some of the cells are empty and can be used for
honey storage it can also be used for pollen storage
the bees that collect pollen put it right in the cells remember on
the 21st day a worker hatches and here we have one
this brand new bee is coming out she has chewed her wax cover
off by herself she'll groom herself and go right to work among the nurse
bees on the brood frames keeping things clean
and later feeding other larvae one of the benefits of the honeybee
is the fact that they have a tendency to hoard honey
they produce far more than they need to get them through winter
and this lets beekeepers harvest honey we can also harvest comb and wax
so this shows the bees on the entrance fanning out the air keeping things
moving so the honey gets properly dehydrated
down remember it has to be under 19 or it
could ferment and spoil this is fantastic looking
honey this comes from asters and other
floral sources like clover and now goldenrod here's a slow motion
sequence again of the worker foraging honeybee she may
only live five weeks this time of year which is in august and she's collecting
the pollen again on her hind legs in specially shaped
pollen baskets so she's busy getting nectar it takes 12
worker honeybees their entire lifetime to produce a
single teaspoon of honey so i hope you appreciate that providing
flowers and natural resources in the environment
and diversity will provide not just for honeybees
but for countless native bees and other pollinators
so whenever we plant flowers or preserve natural flowers in the environment we're
helping pollinators everywhere as critical plant pollinators
bees pollinate 80 percent of the world's plants
including 90 different food crops so i hope you've enjoyed this
and that should get a greater appreciation when you look at honeybees
and understand all the work they do to prepare for winter
and to provide honey and wax for people