If humans stopped taking honey from all beehives, how would this affect the world of bees?
• As a beekeeper, I would say bees would be little affected. Bees are hardwired to forage for nectar, and if the nectar flow is good they will continue to fill every available space they can with stores of honey. A large store of honey could be useful for the colony to survive a bad year or two.
Wild bee colonies with plenty of available space, such as in a large tree cavity or in a loft space, are capable of accumulating vast amounts of honey – enough to bring ceilings down.
Peter Gandolfi Chelsfield, Kent, UK
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• Bees store honey for two reasons: first, to provide food to sustain them during flowerless periods, such as northern winters or long dry periods in tropical areas; and second, to produce a swarm – the only way colonies can reproduce.
“Wild bees can accumulate vast amounts of honey in loft spaces – enough to bring ceilings down“
If the workers decide it is a good time to swarm, they make a queen cell and have the current queen lay an egg in it. The grub is fed a special diet so that it develops into a queen capable of laying eggs. The old queen then leaves with half of the workers and drones. Before leaving, they ingest about half the stored honey. Beekeepers know just how much honey a swarm can remove – it is amazing that they can still take off.
To prevent their bees swarming, beekeepers have to open each hive every week and destroy any queen cells that have been built. If they fail to do this, then the hive will swarm.
If humans stopped collecting honey, the colonies kept by commercial beekeepers would eventually disappear, and only wild colonies would remain. This would reduce the yield of many crops that use bees for pollination.
Andrew Carruthers Beaconsfield, Quebec, Canada
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This article appeared in print under the headline “Creating a buzz”
