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Presents... 3 Check It Out! 4 The Honey Factory 6 Honey-Raisin Cookies 7 If Bees Didn’t Buzz 8 Busy As a Bee 10 10 Bee Yourself 11 What Eats Bees? 12 12 Bees in the Attic 14 14 Puzzles 16 16 Making Honey 18 18 Draw Cartoon Bees 20 20 Bee Is a Busy Word 22 22 The Bees in Belize 23 Bee Funnies 24 24 Fuzzy, Buzzing Dynamos 26 26 10 Buzzworthy Facts 28 28 Cowboy Clark & Larry 29 29 Kidz Corner 30 30 Puzzle Solutions 2
Have you ever been outside when, suddenly, there was a bee buzzing around you? Is it a honeybee or its cousin the bumblebee? Whichever it is, your first instinct may be to run inside. Just don’t bother those busy bees! They are working hard to provide you with honey for your toast. How busy are they? The worker bees of the honeybee colony work around the clock, seven days a week. Bumblebees may not put in as many hours on the job, but they have to use more energy. Their wings beat two and one-half times faster than their honeybee cousins. That’s 160 times a second! And besides that, they both have to be on the constant lookout for all the creatures that want to eat them for lunch. In addition to 25 different kinds of bee-eating birds, there are badgers, lizards, toads, snakes, and skunks that are ready to chow down. After you finish this issue, maybe you’ll get busy like the bees. You could become a beekeeper, try your hand at drawing cartoon bees, or make our recipe for honey-raisin cookies. If reading about these busy creatures makes you tired, go ahead and take a nap. But once you are well rested, send us a note and tell us what you liked the best about these busy, busy bees!
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To make just one spoonful of honey, bees must visit 2000 flowers. They collect a few drops of sweet liquid from the heart of each one. Some flowers make nectar at only one time during the day. Bees somehow know the right time to visit those flowers. They can tell one kind of flower from another by color and smell. When a bee finds a good source of nectar, she tells the other bees. They “talk” by dancing. Honeybees use the “round dance” if the flowers are near the hive. The “waggle dance” is for flowers farther away.
J. Marini/Shutterstock.com
To do the round dance, a honeybee moves in small circles. Other bees follow, touching her abdomen with their antennae, or feelers. They are picking up the scent of the flowers.
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There are two circles in the waggle dance. A straight line runs between them. The bee wags her abdomen from side to side as she dances the straight line. If the flowers are to the north, she moves north while waggling. This tells other bees in what direction to fly. She waggles slowly if the flowers are far away. For closer flowers, she waggles faster. A bee’s tongue is something like a drinking straw. She sucks nectar out of flowers with it. The nectar goes into a special “honey stomach,” not into her regular stomach. Back at the hive, she spits the nectar into the mouths of other bees. They pass it back and forth. This mixes it with enzymes that change it into honey. Then the bees spit the honey into a wax honeycomb cell and dry it out by quickly fanning their wings. The honeycomb cells were made by other bees. Liquid wax oozed out from under their abdomens. It quickly hardened into tiny bits of wax. Each bee chewed a piece of wax. At the same time, she worked it with her front feet until it was soft. It took many bits of wax to form all the honeycomb cells. The cells slant up to keep the honey from running out. When a cell is full, a bee puts a “lid” of wax on top. The way bees make honey is one of nature’s miracles. Tiny honeybees know how to talk to each other. They know how to collect nectar, change it into honey, and store it. A hive of bees is indeed an amazing honey factory.
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I am a honeybee, and I live in one of these boxes with 50,000 of my relatives. The boxes are called supers. Beekeepers give us supers so we can make honey in them.
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Each super has frames inside, like the one my beekeeper friend is holding. Female worker bees like me make honeycombs in the frames. We fill the honeycombs with nectar from flowering plants. Then, with our wings flapping, we turn the nectar into honey. Finally, we seal the honeycomb with beeswax.
Beekeepers wear special clothing to protect themselves when they are near us. Honeybees are not mean, but sometimes we get upset. Beekeepers do not want to get stung! When beekeepers check on us, they are careful not to scare the bee colony. They use metal smokers that burn natural fuel, like wood chips. The smoke keeps us calm. Now the beekeeper can work on our hives.
Look at the honey dripping from this honeycomb! After the beeswax is scraped off the frames, they are put in a machine that spins them around and around. This pulls out all the honey from the honeycombs. In a few days, people will be able to enjoy the honey I helped make.
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