{"id":10349,"date":"2021-03-16T17:18:15","date_gmt":"2021-03-16T17:18:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.naturepl.com\/blog\/?p=10349"},"modified":"2022-02-22T17:01:31","modified_gmt":"2022-02-22T17:01:31","slug":"the-secret-world-of-wild-honey-bees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.naturepl.com\/blog\/2021\/03\/16\/the-secret-world-of-wild-honey-bees\/","title":{"rendered":"The Secret World of Wild Honey Bees"},"content":{"rendered":"\"Viewed<\/a>\n

New discoveries and previously unseen behaviour<\/h3>\n

Arndt wanted to create a portrait of these amazing insects unlike anything ever seen before, so he set up a natural nest in his garden. He was given permission to remove a fallen beech tree from a German forest. The tree contained an abandoned woodpecker nest. Arndt cut a window into the cavity, which allowed him to sneak his macro lens inside. Then he moved a honeybee queen from a nearby colony into the woodpecker burrow, and the rest of the colony followed. Arndt shot more than 60,000 pictures over six months, capturing some fascinating behaviour, including the honey bees excreting wax scales used to build their combs, forming living chains for temperature regulation, and newly formed bees chewing their way out of their wax-capped brood cells.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some of the most amazing images from the project show the epic battle between honey bees and intruding hornets, which end with ingenious bees ganging up to roast the hornet alive!<\/p>\n

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We asked Ingo to select some of his favourite images from the project and to tell us the story behind them and the fascinating facts they reveal.<\/h3>\n\"\"<\/a>\n

Colonising a woodpecker nest<\/h3>\n

The image on the left shows a honey bee nest in an abandoned black woodpecker nest high above the forest floor in a beech tree.<\/p>\n

“I climbed the tree with a rope and photographed the picture, 20 metres above the ground. It took me an hour to get the shot.”<\/p>\n\"\"<\/a>\n

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The bees cluster around the queen<\/h3>\n

In the image on the right we now see the bees colonizing the abandoned woodpecker nest.\u00a0About an hour and a half after moving in, most of the bees gather together to form a cluster around the queen at the top of the cavity.<\/p>\n

“I photographed this picture from a hide that I built on the back of the\u00a0tree cavity.”<\/p>\n

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The original comb<\/h3>\n

The original drop-shaped comb is expanded substantially within just a few days.<\/p>\n

“To do this, the bees repeatedly create new saucers in tightly packed spheres, then stretching them out into tubes and warming up the wax. The internal stresses in the wax cause the walls separating it from the six neighboring cells to organize themselves into homogeneous sections on their own, forming the perfect, hexagonal cell structure.”<\/p>\n

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The comb emerges<\/h3>\n

Roughly two weeks after the bees move in, this colony\u2019s first combs start to become visible.<\/p>\n

“Construction began right from the outset, but it had remained hidden beneath the bodies of the bees.”<\/p>\n

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Chains of bees<\/h3>\n

The bees remain locked together in chains, but but apparently are not engaged in any active tasks.<\/p>\n

“They do not produce any wax scales, and they do not participate in building the combs. They remain steadily in the same position, anchored to their respective neighbours, for many minutes or even hours at a time.”<\/p>\n

These images document the phenomenon of\u00a0 “construction chains” which has been a focus of recent honey bee research.<\/p>\n

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The queen and her court<\/h3>\n

This close up shows the queen bee laying eggs.<\/p>\n

“Court bees steer the queen to an empty cell \u2013 parking in reverse! In order to take this picture, it was necessary not to disturb the bees. I worked with red light and\u00a0waited for hours for the right moment. The queen moved in front of my camera several times, but it took ages to get her in the perfect spot with the workers perfectly positioned around her.”<\/p>\n

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The workers hatch<\/h3>\n

Here we see three\u00a0worker bees hatching. Remnants of the clear, skintight shell surrounding the bodies, legs, feelers, and wings of the pupae cling to their heads.<\/p>\n

“We can only speculate as to the purpose of this shell. Perhaps it provides protection against water loss? Bees that are ready to hatch begin gnawing open the lid to their isolation unit from the inside. In order to open the lid completely, worker bees on the outside usually come to their aid.”<\/p>\n

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Bringing the pollen home<\/h3>\n

While visiting flowers, pollen gets caught on the \u201cfur\u201d of the foragers and is carried back to the nest, clinging to the back legs in a small package.<\/p>\n

“The colour of the pollen indicates which flowers were visited. ”<\/p>\n\"\"<\/a>\n

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Closing the entrance<\/strong><\/h3>\n

“The opening of the bee nest in trees is sealed by bee bodies on warm nights. Beekeepers know that in artificial hives bees congregate in masses on warm nights just outside the entrance slot. Their interpretation of this behaviour is that the bees leave the nest because they are getting too hot inside. However it turns out that this is a misconception. Clumping in front of the entrance makes no sense in a hive with a small slot as entrance. ”<\/p>\n

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Honey bee in flight, showing opened Nassanov gland, Germany.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Navigation and Communication in the Forest<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Over the course of evolution, honey bees have adapted to life in the forest, which involves orientation, navigation and communication.\u00a0 As Ingo explains, “The conditions and challenges in this milieu are completely different from the test conditions under which honey bees have been studied for the last 100 years.<\/p>\n

Bees are capable of orienting themselves based on the polarization pattern of the sunlight in the sky. This pattern changes gradually across the sky from one point to another. Bees are also able to communicate about newly discovered feeding stations, such as individual blossoming trees or aphid colonies with honeydew.<\/p>\n

The abdomens of worker bees contain a Nasonov gland, from which geraniol can be released as a lure. The bees make extensive use of this pheromone lure when the swarm is led to a new abode and when experienced bees take fledglings to a feeding station.<\/p>\n

This project has raised a number of exciting questions which may lead to future research on this subject.”<\/p>\n

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Foraging, water collecting, communicating and dispensing with drones!<\/h3>\n

Click on the image in the gallery below to read all about the\u00a0 fascinating behaviour shown.<\/p>\n