In the final period of their lives, the worker bees' job is to collect food. They meet all their own nutritional needs from the pollen and nectar they gather from flowers. Pollen is rich in protein, and nectar is both a source of quick energy and the raw material for honey. Since bees are unable to forage for food in the winter, they store honey in the hive. They do not store pollen separately for the winter, but collect it in sufficient quantities for the younger bees to eat in rainy weather.28

HONEYBEES’ DEFENSE STRATEGY: USING HEAT TO DESTROY THE ENEMY   The Japanese giant hornets are literally a nightmare for the introduced European honeybees. A colony of 30,000 European honeybees can be killed in roughly three hours by a group of some 30 hornets, which then occupy the hive. Local honeybees, on the other hand, have been created with a perfect defense mechanism. When a hornet discovers a new colony, it secretes a special marking pheromone to inform the others of the fact. Since that pheromone is also detected by the Japanese honeybees, they all gather at the entrance of the hive to defend it. When a hornet approaches, some 500 bees take to the air, surround it in a tight ball and generate muscle heat. In an infrared photograph taken of such an attack, the temperature in the white regions rises as high as 47 degrees centigrade (117o F). The honeybees are able to withstand this heat, but it spells death for hornets. “Unusual thermal defence by a honeybee against mass attack by hornets,” Nature, Vol. 377, 28 September 1995, pp. 334-336.

The Japanese honeybees kill the attacking hornets by generating high temperatures.

The pollen they collect is not consumed directly, but is turned into a substance known as "bee pollen" or "bee bread." The bees bring about this transition by adding nectar and various enzymes to the pollen collected by flowers.29

The job of collecting pollen and nectar falls to bees that are 21 days old. At this stage, their wax glands that served to produce wax stop secreting, and the workers leave the hive to begin their new and dangerous jobs. It is hazardous to fly around outside among the flowers because all the bees' natural enemies, such as spiders and dragonflies, live there. In addition, this task is a rather tiring one, since the bees must constantly fly back and forth between the hive and the flowers, their source of food. Bees whose flight muscles wear out die soon afterwards.

But meanwhile, their bodies are equipped with specially created systems to collect nectar and pollen. They swallow nectar to fill their internal honey sacs. They do not swallow pollen as they do nectar, but carry it back to the hive in small pouches affixed to the sides of their hind legs.

Foraging bees have some dangerous enemies, such as the mantis (right), dragonfly and spider.

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• 28.Karl von Frisch, Arilarin Hayati (The Life of Bees), pp.29-30
• 29.Mark L. Winston, The Biology of the Honey Bee, p.58

This article is based on the works of Harunyahya www.harunyahya.com