When people talk about bees, they often mean factory farmed honeybees in manufactured hives.
At Cape Point we have 2 researchers studying our Cape subspecies, with their propolis wall as a fire barrier.
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Hi Diana :)
Could you also include a prompt for discussion?
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I thought that was in the first sentence? When I first heard her talking about her research, she said she was the first to study wild bees, not the commercially farmed ones. Bees don’t like square hives with cold corners where they battle to maintain exactly the right temperature.
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I meant something to guide discussion of the linked source within the Forum. I could have picked some question or more-specific talking point, but in general it’s better to include a more direct question in your top post.
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ujubee for the win! I discovered them either at the beginning of this year or late last year - I knew honey bees were somewhat interesting from the basic classes I had in primary school (waggle dance, etc). However, not until I started reading ujubee’s blog, did I realise just how interesting they really are - especially the interactions with other species!
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I guess a potential point of discussion is how little-appreciated honey bees (specifically Apis mellifera) are as a wild species, rather than as merely a source of honey, beeswax and other assorted derived products, or as an agricultural tool to facilitate pollination.
The association with pseudoscorpions, for example, is one I never even knew of. Things like this have made these honey bees so much more interesting than I had given them credit for, and have given me a newfound appreciation of this bee as a species.
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That’s amazing!
I know of some of the miscellaneous chelicerates, but I’m used to much larger ones from the Israeli desert and have only ever experienced them as hunters. It’s cool to see them interacting in a more complex way with another species.
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I was exploring Africa Geographic this evening and to my pleasant surprise, I came across this article that covers Ujubee and the local honeybees!
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Oh my! Great story… The photos of fynbos are AMAZING!
It’s either they have a great photographer or that place in fact is a paradise, and for me it’s both!
Paradise in our fynbos. A lot of dedication with whole days spent with wild bees. Then good photography.
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A very nice presentation on the wild Cape honeybee and the ecological interactions and wild behaviour it has in its natural environment, by Jenny Cullinan:
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