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Discussion of Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Sat, 3 Apr 1993 09:28:32 -0500
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Dear Bee-Liners:
                After such scholarly contributions about the spread of
the European honeybee in the New World, it was a bit disappointing to
read David Inouye's message about bumblebee honey.  Here are some
corrections:
  >  Bumblebees, which are native to the US, also produce some honey.
  > But usually not more than enough to get the annual colony through a
  > few days of bad weather.
This completely ignores the tremendous "warehousing potential" of a
large Bombus colony as it enters into the phase of queen-production.  A
large colony of B. impatiens (or B. vosnesenskii) for example, may have
as much as a kilogram or two of honey stored in its comb at this time.
  >  It tastes good, but is more dilute than honeybee honey, and is
  > stored in the open, leftover cases where bees pupated (except for
  > the initial honeypot made by the queen when she is starting the
  > colony).
As in the case of honeybees, it is only the more recently collected
honey that is dilute.  Bumblebee honey that has been in the "warehouse"
for a longer time becomes as concentrated as honeybee honey (measure it
if you don't believe me), and the empty cocoons which contain it are
frequently sealed ("capped").  Also, it is incorrect to say that the
only alternative to empty cocoons is the "initial honeypot" made by the
queen: depending upon their economic circumstances, all bumblebee
colonies will, if they have a generous intake of nectar, construct wax
honeypots around the comb (this is taken to ridiculous extremes, for
example, in laboratory or greenhouse colonies fed with ad libitum sugar
solution).  Also, not all foundress queens construct only a single wax
honeypot: B. griseocollis, for example, in eastern N. America (and in
the mid-west also, Sydney Cameron?) regularly build two or three
honeypots and, as is not usually the case among Bombus species, they
start building them well before they lay their first-brood eggs!
 >  I doubt that Native Americans would have looked for bumblebee nests
 > as a source of this resource.
Well, I'm sorry to be insulting, but I suspect that many Native Americ-
ans were (and doubtless still ARE!) better naturalists than some academ-
ic "ecologists"!  After all, during the month of August (in the northern
hemisphere), kids all over (native and otherwise) have regularly tested
their bravery, year after year, by waging war on their local Bombus
factory-fortresses . . .
  Truly, the warehousing dynamics of a Bombus hive are a fascinating
study in social insect adaptability--we have only recently begun to
appreciate, for example, how exquisitely fine-tuned are the "optimality
tradeoffs" involved in balancing the complementary resources (honey and
pollen) required by a bumblebee colony.
    Best regards, Chris Plowright.
 
--
Chris Plowright - via the University of Ottawa
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