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Bee Day
"He is not worthy of the honey-comb
That shuns the hives because the bees have stings."
~ Henry VI, Part 3, William Shakespeare, 1588-92
Beekeepers, gardeners, honey-lovers, and anyone who appreciates the industrious and busy nature of these keystone species and essential pollinators, this bee’s-eye view of a flower tartan is sure to catch the eye! With its bold black and yellow stripes and floral notes, this sett cannot be missed. Sweet floral colours are combined with the bold yellow and black, a subtle warning by the bees, perhaps to "best beware my sting!"!
The busy bee see the world through five eyes: two large compound eyes made up of thousands of tiny facets for detailed vision, along with three smaller light-sensitive eyes on the tops of their heads that help detect light intensity and aid navigation. Their color vision is also quite different from ours. Bees are trichromatic, but shifted toward shorter wavelengths, meaning they see ultraviolet, blue, and green light — but not red.
It is no surprise that creatures so important for the pollination of crops inspire such respect and affection. From humanity’s long relationship with honey-makers grew the old custom of “telling the bees,” in which hives were treated almost as members of the household. Important family news — births, marriages, and especially deaths — was quietly shared with them, sometimes with black ribbons tied to the hive. It was believed that bees should be kept informed and shown proper respect, or else they might leave, stop producing honey, or bring a turn of ill fortune. Though especially associated with rural Scotland, the tradition was found across Britain and Ireland as well.
Folklore offers one more piece of advice for aspiring beekeepers: never purchase bees with ordinary money—only with gold coins, or better yet, through barter or as a gift—so that no simple transaction offends those busy bees!
Welcome bees into your garden with their favourite flowers. Spring: Crocus, Hyacinth, Borage, Calendula, and Wild Lilac; Summer: Bee Balm, Cosmos, Echinacea, Snapdragons, Foxglove, and Hosta; and Autumn: Zinnias, Sedum, Asters, Witch Hazel, and Goldenrod. Remember the bees! Buzz buzz! 💛 🖤 💗 💚 🐝 🐝 🐝 🍯 🌸
World Bee Day is celebrated on the day Anton Janša, a pioneer of modern apiculture, was born in 1734. He is noted for his expertise, lectures, and books on the field of beekeeping as well as changing the size and shape of hives to a form where they can be stacked together like blocks.
The purpose of this international day is to acknowledge the role of bees and other pollinators for the ecosystem.
A cousin to the honey bee, the bumblebee, also written as bumble bee, is a member of the bee genus Bombus, in the family Apidae.
This tartan, designed by Carol A.L. Martin, is inspired by a bumble bee collecting pollen from pink flowers.
The word "bumblebee" is a compound word of "bumble" + "bee" — "bumble" meaning to hum, buzz, drone, or move ineptly or flounderingly.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term "bumblebee" was first recorded as having been used in the 1530 work Lesclarcissement by John Palsgrave, "I bomme, as a bombyll bee dothe." However, it also states that the term "humblebee" predates it, having first been used in 1450 in Fysshynge wyth Angle, "In Juyll the greshop & the humbylbee in the medow."
The latter term was used in A Midsummer Night's Dream (circa 1600) by William Shakespeare, "The honie-bags steale from the humble Bees." An old provincial name, "dumbledor", also denoted a buzzing insect such as a bumblebee or cockchafer, "dumble" probably imitating the sound of these insects, while "dor" meant "beetle".
Bumblebees are social insects which form colonies with a single queen. Colonies are smaller than those of honeybees, sometimes as few as 50 individuals in a nest. Female bumblebees can sting repeatedly, but generally ignore humans and other animals.
Like honeybees, bumblebees feed on nectar and gather nectar to add to the stores in the nest, and pollen to feed their young. They forage using colour and spatial relationships to identify flowers to feed from. Some bumblebees rob nectar, making a hole near the base of a flower to access the nectar while avoiding pollen transfer.
Bumblebees are important pollinators of both crops and wildflowers. Because bumblebees do not overwinter the entire colony, they do not stockpile honey, so are not useful as honey producers. Bumblebees are increasingly cultured for agricultural use as pollinators, among other reasons because they can pollinate plants such as tomatoes in greenhouses by buzz pollination (moving their flight muscles rapidly to shake loose pollen) whereas other pollinators cannot.
According to late 20th-century folklore which you may have come across, "the laws of aerodynamics prove the bumblebee should be incapable of flight, as it does not have the capacity (in terms of wing size or beats per second) to achieve flight with the degree of wing loading necessary." For more on the origin of this clearly false claim (and better physics analysis to disprove the obvious), click the bumblebee.