Bee People and the Bugs They Love by Frank Mortimer

Author:Frank Mortimer [Mortimer, Frank]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Citadel Press
Published: 2020-04-02T00:00:00+00:00

BEE NERD ALERT: Bees have five eyes. Two large compound eyes situated on either side of a bee’s head, and three small eyes in a triangular pattern at the top of a bee’s head that detect light and help bees to navigate during flight.

Since bees and flowers have a symbiotic relationship, whenever you ask yourself “why” when thinking about honeybees, just look at flowers for the answers. Flowers are colorful to attract pollinators. Next time you look at a bunch of flowers, notice how the leaves are green but the flowers are full of color. Now guess where the pollen and nectar is located? Also, have you ever noticed how some flowers have one color on the tips, yet the center is an entirely different color? When you look at some flowers under ultraviolet light to mimic how a bee sees them, a bull’s-eye, or a pattern on the petals emerges that bees can see, but humans cannot. These patterns on the flowers guide bees into where the nectar and pollen sources are waiting. For example, the common dandelion might look like it’s solid yellow to us, but to a bee, the outer rim looks white, while the center looks like it’s vibrant purple. This is how the flower guides the bees in for a landing, the same way we have blinking lights on our airport runways to help the pilots bring their airplanes in for a safe landing. Thanks for flying with A. mellifera, flying the skies for a sweeter tomorrow.

Bees can also distinguish different shapes, which is another thing that you could take into consideration when painting your hives. Another of my bee yards is located on private property that’s twelve acres of scenic, undisturbed, native forest, with a river running next to it. It’s a beautiful natural property, and when you’re there, it feels like you’re at a mountain lodge in upstate New York’s Adirondack Mountains and far, far away from northern New Jersey. The owners are very environmentally minded, and they are always trying to do what’s good for their natural oasis, which is why they invited me to place my hives on their property. They had asked that the hives blend in with the natural setting and not stand out like a bunch of tacky T-shirt shops from the Jersey Shore. So instead of painting the hives, I stained them to bring out the natural look of the wood boxes. That is except on the very front of the hive entrance, where I painted different shapes and colors to help the bees identify what hive they call home from all the others. It’s subtle enough that it’s not noticeable unless you’re flying in for a landing, then it’s as clear as a floral bull’s-eye. They are simple shapes, like lines, squares, stars, circles, and rectangles, but still enough to provide visual cues for the honeybees. These shapes are also how I refer to the hives, “the blue squares,” or “the yellow rectangle,” or “the white

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