The Work Of The Honeybee

There’s hardly nothing more enjoyable than spending a sunny afternoon watching beehives. It’s busy. Every second, bee bombardiers take off. Their flights take them up to three miles away, and they return laden with cargo. Thousands of bees share the same flight path, without even one aircraft traffic controller to guide them. Some return so weighted down with yellow, orange, or black pollen that they can barely walk, let alone fly. A fuzzy brown stiped bee plunks down on the landing ramp, waddles into the hive, and has her pack unloaded by a younger hive bee. Then back outside she goes, because a honeybee never ever stops working.

Over her life, a honeybee performs most every job in the hive, her body adapting and sometimes growing different appendages for each. She starts with the humblest and ends with the best. From the moment a little bee breaks out of her mathematically perfect honeycomb cell, she starts cleaning and keeping brood warm. Then she graduates to feeding younger larvae. Then she spends a week making wax, building honeycomb, and moving food and nectar around inside the hive. After that she guards the hive entrance from intruders. Only after this, finally, is she mature enough for the best job of all: flying outside, visiting flowers, and gathering pollen, nectar, and water to bring back for everybody in the hive. A honeybee never ever stops working.

During warmer months her life comes to an end after around 34 days. It’s the wings that usually do her in. Wings wear out under the tremendous use and, at the end, they’re torn and ratty and impossible to fly with. One sunny day a honeybee will take to the air, gain altitude, adjust for wind direction, fly off into the wild blue yonder, and like Amelia Earhard, disappear forever. But until that day comes, a honeybee never ever stops working.