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Show THE OGDEN VALLEY NEWS Page 14 Volume III, Issue IV December 15, 2000 To Bee or Not to . . . By Barb Ruiz, Director of Education, Ogden Nature Center As outside temperatures drop the animals at the Ogden Nature Center burrow, fluff, escape, cache and cluster to survive. Turtles snuggle into the mud at the bottom of our ponds, fox and deer grow extra fur to hold body-heated air close, Canada geese head south for fresh unfrozen food and honeybees huddle together, shivering their hive to a toasty 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Visitors to the Ogden nature Center often mistake papery gray nests of wasps for beehives. But the nests of honeybees and paper wasps are easy to distinguish if you consider their winter survival tactics and lifestyles. Honeybees build their homes in hollow trees from wax manufactured in their bodies. Twenty pounds of honey are needed to make one pound of wax. To manufacture wax, they gorge on honey then hang motionless in the hive, a curtain of connected bees, while the wax develops. In about twenty four hours, discs of wax come out of slits in their abdomens called wax pockets and other bees collect, chew and pat it into vertical walls or combs of hexagonal (6sided) cells. Honeycomb is used to store food and developing young bees, called brood. A substance called propolis, made from plant resin collected from tree buds, is used to cement up crevices in the comb. In winter, honeybees congregate in their wax hive and stay warm enough to survive cold temperatures. After mating season, when outside temperatures around 57 degrees Fahrenheit incite winter clustering, males are killed or driven out of the hive to freeze and starve since they do no work after spring mating. Only the fertilized queen and female workers survive. As nectar flow stops outside the hive, their brood rearing and field activities diminish and cease. Stored honey feeds the remaining population, which eventually only includes four to six week old bees. Born too late in the season for much fieldwork, these young bees still have enough life left in them to survive the inactive winter. The middle of their cluster gets really warm, so bees constantly rotate between the cooler outside layers and the inside warmest layers near the queen. Enough worker bees must survive the cold months to support the queen when she resumes laying eggs in late winter or early spring. Eggs look like a tiny piece of white hair, and those of queens and workers do not differ until they hatch, become larvae and begin to eat. Queen larvae are fed a special substance excreted from the mouths of nurse bees called royal jelly. Workers and males, or drones, are also fed royal jelly for the first three days, but are then switched to honey and bee bread, a mixture of pollen and honey. Worker bees born in the peak of MANSELL AND ASSOCIATES summer live only a couple of weeks before they die, but as their replacements are constantly in production through the warm months, enough healthy males are available to fertilize any new queens, and plenty of young workers will be ready to cluster through the next winter. Other species of bees survive winter freezes by other methods. Worker and male bumblebees, that nest in holes in the ground, die out when it’s cold, but fertilized females (queens) hibernate in protected sites until spring when they begin a new colony. Paper wasp homes are made from chewed weathered or decaying wood mixed with gluey saliva. The resultant pulpy paste is spit out to create nests, which, depending on the species, can either be built above or below ground. Baldfaced hornets, the largest paper wasps, build their nests above ground of grayish strong paper made from weather worn wood. Horizontal rows of hexagonal cells are surrounded with one continuous large piece of strong paper for protection. This outside envelope is laid down in circular bands from the wasp’s mouth and reveals different colors of wood used in construction. Though the outside envelope is sometimes laid on top of the cells in a quilted fashion for insulation, paper nests are not sufficient to protect their inhabitants from freezing temperatures. In temperate regions, like Utah, only fertilized queens survive winter by abandoning their nests, migrating to a protected place such as a rotting log, and hibernating until spring, living off extra fat stored in their bodies. In spring, functioning as both worker and queen, each surviving female emerges and THE TRUSTED NAME IN REAL ESTATE Seasons greetings to all & to all a good year! 2580 North Highway 162 Eden, Utah 84310 Phone: 801-745-8800 Ext. 328 Fax: 745-1400 Cell-Voice Mail: 391-4100 E-mail: peteb@konnections.com www.move2ogdenvalley.com starts a new nest by building a few small cells in which she rears only workers. They hatch and continue nest building and brood rearing as the queen applies herself exclusively to egg laying. Small nests with paper envelopes surrounding a single layer of comb were probably built by a fertile female that got eaten by a bird or otherwise killed as she went about the business of finding food and wood for her first brood and nest. If the queen and her first brood survive, the colony and nest size continually grow through the summer. Subsequent broods, fed by workers rather than just by the queen get a better diet and develop into larger, full-sized fertile females and males. Adults feed larvae chewed insects, nectar and fruit juice. This adult-to-larvae feeding, called trophollaxis, does not require that food be stored in the nest. By the end of summer, fully developed females and males mate, then the females hibernate to begin the cycle over again. Old paper wasp nests can be safely collected a month after the first killing frost. Though the nest will be too battered by winter’s end to be useful for next year’s wasps, other insects and spiders may take up residence. Come visit the Nature Center classroom observation beehive to see the warm winter congregation of honeybees. Put your hand on the hive and feel the heat. Then closely examine the gray paper wasp nest above the beehive. Which one would you rather spend your winter in? Note: This article was provided courtesy of the Ogden Nature Center. The Nature Center is located at 966 West 12th Street. For more information about the Nature Center, call (801) 621-1867. For Sale Purchase this home on a 1.53 acre lot for $189,975 Located In Valley Estates Subdivision In Liberty Standard Features Include: 2600 Approx. Sq. Ft. (1316 Sq. Ft. Finished) Vaulted Ceilings Rounded Corners on Sheetrock Gas Fireplaces Custom Cabinets Walk-in Closet in Master Bedroom Tile Entry Main Floor Laundry Garage Door Opener One Year Homeowner’s Warranty Call: Lynn at 564-1700 or Kim at 253-1237 Marketed by Norhern Utah Real Estate (Owner Agent) |