Bees behaving oddly

by Jo-ann Hodgson in At home on 27.06.08

Bumblebees have been busy in their search for nectar, turning to aphids for their new dish of the day.

Since we reported on the plight of Britain’s bumblebees last month, the stripy ones have been spotted increasingly feeding on honeydew.

It has been suggested the bees may be looking for a substitute to the nectar now lacking in our gardens and fields. 

While it’s common to see bees exercising their ’smelly feet’ to sniff out sugar in aphid secretions and from extra-floral nectars on plants such as bracken in upland areas, it seems the behaviour is becoming more widespread.

“Honeydew is a good source of food for bees,” Stephen Fleming from Vita (Europe) Ltd, a company that researches and develops products to maintain the health of honeybees, told More Than Living.

“Aphids produce honeydew, which is the sticky substance you’ll often find on your car after parking it under a Sycamore tree. But bees will normally only feed on aphid secretions in very warm conditions.”

Stephen noted that the phenomenon could in part be due to the gap in flowering that occurs in June.

“Bees are expected to get busy when the summer surge starts in July,” he said.

However, aphid secretion is not a completely satisfactory substitute. The dew doesn’t contain the protein bees need to keep them healthy and feed their young.

Over in the U S of A, the plight of the honeybee is also becoming more high-profile. Haagen-Dazs is currently fronting a campaign to halt the decline of the pollinators so crucial to the future of some of their best-selling flavours.  

The ice-cream makers recently told Congress that more than 40% of its products rely on the hard work of the honeybees that pollinate flora such as strawberry plants and almond trees.

The company has awarded a $250,000 research grant to the University of Pennsylvania to investigate the mysterious ‘colony collapse disorder’, which has wiped out up to 90% of bee colonies in certain parts of the US.

They have also launched a public education campaign, introducing a new flavour called Vanilla Honey Bee to their ice cream range and aiming to distribute one million flower seeds to help the bees.

IMAGE by Flickr user sjoe