6.3 ALTERNATIVE FORMS OF BREEDING BEES are social and hardworking insects which are part of the biodiversity on which we all depend for our survival. They also produce high-quality products – honey, pollen, , beeswax, propolis, and – all collected and used by people for various nutritional and medicinal purposes. Bees royal jelly venom 1 MORE Bee venom has been used for treating arthritis, multiple sclerosis, fibromyalgia, cancer, epilepsy, depression, and more. 1 Origin and behaviour Native to Africa or Asia, honeybees were imported to other countries: some are wild species ( ), others ( ) have been domesticated for hundreds of years. Domesticated bees are social insects, as they form and live in large, well-organised groups and, compared to wild bees, are easily managed and manipulated. Bees visit flowers for their food, nectar and pollen , rich in sugar and high nutritive values, respectively. Apis florea Apis mellifera 1 DO Why do bees consume nectar and pollen? 1 The greatest pollinators When bees pick up the pollen of flowers and spread it, they allow plants, including many food crops, to reproduce. Bee-pollinated crops contribute to approximately one-third of the total human dietary supply , due to bees’ wide availability and effectiveness in pollinating a great variety of crops, including fruits, vegetables, oilseeds, and legumes. 2 MORE Bees potentially contribute towards 15 of the 17 SDGs and a minimum of 30 SDG targets. 2 The bee colony Honeybee colonies live in and consist of three kinds of adult bees. hives it runs the whole hive, laying up to 2,500 eggs a day in the summer months, and producing chemicals to guide the behaviour of the other bees. The queen can live up to five years; then, workers will create a new queen by selecting a young larva and feeding it ‘royal jelly’, which enables the larva to develop into a fertile queen. Queen: these are all the females that , build and protect the hive. Returning to their hive, workers perform the ‘ dance’, which is a figure-eight dance to communicate the direction, distance, and quality of food resources. The average worker bee lives for just five to six weeks and produces around a twelfth of a teaspoon of honey. Workers: forage for food waggle these are the male bees, and their purpose is with the queen. Several hundreds live in each hive in spring and summer. But in winter, when the hive goes into survival mode, the drones are . Drones: to mate kicked out Colony collapse disorder Over the past 15 years, colonies of bees have been dying or disappearing, but the reason remains unknown. Researchers suppose possible causes are pesticide poisoning, changes to the habitat where bees forage, lack of nesting areas, poor nutrition, hard winters, electromagnetic interferences, pests, viruses and parasites. ONLINE RESOURCES The waggle dance Bees and Fibonacci sequence