Bees descended from wasps and emerged alongside the first flowers.  They switched from dining on other insects to a diet of pollen and nectar instead.  There are 20,000 different species of bee alive today.  Some of these – especially honeybees, bumblebees and stingless bees – form highly social groups that offer a deep insight into how nature’s civilizations work.

Eusocial creatures divide up jobs between themselves.  They pass knowledge and learning on form one generation to another, care for their youngsters and even, in certain circumstances, sacrifice lives for the benefit of the group.  Such characteristics were for a long time thought to be unique to mankind when it first organized itself into tribes and eventually cities and states.  But, as any beekeeper will tell you that is not so.

Katherine Swift who wrote The Morville Hours is a beekeeper and there were many interesting snippets about bees in her book too. One of the things she mentions is that bees are now threatened by Varroa which is a parasitic mite endemic in most countries.  It arrived in the UK in the mid 1990s.  The mites attach themselves to the bees and weaken their bodies.  This is easy to treat in domesticated bees, but not in wild bees which if left untreated can lead to the extinction of whole colonies.

I say long live the bee.