photo documentation-Can bees gain gloss and health within 9 days' time?

[SerenaSYH]

When I first started growing roses and started getting interested in bees, I have always trusted my eyes in terms of visual clues and observations on what is going on with them and I always like to keep a semi-journal in terms of what I observe and checking with the experts to see if what I'm observing is correct. I take note of the markings, the shine of the bee fur, how much gloss there is both in their thorax and the patterns of stripings of their abdomen, and even the gloss of their eyes once I get the chance to zoom in on my photo. My garden was started in March 2009. In 2009 I had a total of about 3 honeybees the ENTIRE YEAR. They visited the Lavender. The honeybees were very pale colored and seemed rather weak. Slow flight patterns, not very energetic.  In the year 2010, the exact same color-furred bee appeared with the Lavender which blooms throughout the season. But they would very rarely visit-just once in a blue moon. Then my 2010 Italian oregano started blooming in early July and the honeybees started to frequent the oregano regularly, but it'd be just one honeybee per plant. That one would fly off, then another would take its place or visit another oregano plant next to it.

This is a typical photo of the bee.


But when I got my Russian sage in 2010 and it started to bloom, I could swear that these honeybees shown below are the same type of honeybee because it seemed to me the fur was gradually getting shinier and glossier and the bees activity level seemed so much more enlivened and energetic. This photo was taken 9 days later. Is this just my own overzealous excitement getting in the way of my observation skills??? According to a fellow rose gardener who actually studied honeybees during graduate school) he says these bees are from completely different honeybee species (the oregano one being middle Eastern instead of the Italian with the Russian sage).

9 days after oregano photo:


13 days after the oregano photo:


Here is a summary of what the etymology student/Rose Gardener wrote:
"An adult worker honeybee won't change its coloring that dramatically in a couple of days, regardless of what it's foraging. They don't eat nectar, so the nectar source is unable to change their nutrition that dramatically that quickly. Look it up and you'll find that honeybees with predominantly grayish hairs aren't unhealthy. They derive from a different subspecies (native to eastern Europe if I remember correctly) than the one most commonly used by American honeybee hybridizers (who tend to use bees derived from the Italian subspecies). I studied honeybees as an entomology graduate student. There's lots I don't know, but they don't eat nectar and I've never heard or read anyone assert that they're hair color changes after they emerge from pupation. They aren't mammals and don't have that sort of mammalian physiology."

He was definitely right in that honeybees are not mammals, whereas when mammals are better fed, they tend to have very shiny fur as opposed to dull fur from malnutrition. However, at the same time to me insects can change metamorphosis extremely quickly and instincts tell me that 9 days is quite lengthy since a worker honeybee only lives 1-4 months (from what I've researched online). Might not nutrition likewise suddenly power up their health and vitality too? Also another very important thing I mentioned to Scott awhile back is that honeybees regurgitate the nectar to put into the royal jelly and back into the hive. In mammals whenever a parent regurgitates the food to their young (like with birds and wolves) a remnant of that nutrition still is still retained by the animal anyway; not all of it is able to be completely regurgitated in other words. Might this also happen with the honeybees as well? in which they got some of this direct nutrition and it strengthened them significantly?

All I know is that my 2010 honeybees did seem as if they were gradually getting glossier! less dull. Also honeybees are almost never seen in my neighborhood until I got that Russian sage. To have 2 different hives simultaneously suddenly appear to visit just 2 Russian sage would be quite a long ways to fly I would think. And I would like to note that the bees by the end of the season were super fast, vigorous, and never more did I see any dull fur.... :? And the changes were gradual. But again, this could all be psychological overenthused imaginings, so I wanted to be sure if I'm just delusional or if my eyes indeed "see what I saw..." If I was that delusional than why are the photos still showing that light pale coloration gaining in the shine and a gradually deepening of the golden striping? Any thoughts, anyone?

Most important of all, have any of you experienced beekeepers noticed a big difference for example in the shine of your bees' fur when they are from a healthy versus non-healthy hive. Do you notice changes for example when a winter-starved hive suddenly gets a good nutritional source in the spring- do you notice a change in energy, constitution, and appearance of the bees?

Also my last picture shows that I always know when a bee is not from my original neighborhood hive. This bee that I got in 2011 is not my 2010 honeybees!!!! These honeybees came in 2011 to visit my new holly bush. Everything about this group of bees is different. The wings are far more short and fat. They are dark and swarthy, and the much thinner yellow stripes I consider tan and not the golden glow that my 2010 honeybees developed into. I nicknamed this set of honeybees, my Corsican honeybees because they are so "tan" and the other hive, my Swedish bees for being far lighter and for having wider yellow bands.

Here is the 2011 "Corsican" honeybee. I've got more photos of the "Corsican" honeybee, but unfortunately, the photos turned out too blurry.

[Brian D. Bray]

I'll answer a few points.

Pale colored bees are usually those that have hatched within the last few days.  In rare circumstances newly hatched bees will immediately begin to forage but only if the vast majority of older bees have perished for some reason such as poisoning.  Both the exposure to toxins and being young bees would give them a low or weak activity level.  This type of behaviour is usually noticeable where someone has tried to kill off a feral hive with insecticides, ie in their wall and they want them out. 
The coloring of newly hatched bees will become shinny after a few groomings so they will seem to brighten.  This occurs in virtually every hive but it usually occurs out of sight of all but the beekeeper.  Since forager bees have normally spent weeks feeding larvae, building comb, tending the queen, and on other housekeeping chores they almost always appear shinny.

The pictures of all but the Corsican appear to be of hybrid type.  When Italian bees are crossed with other subspecies of bees a wide range of colors within the same hive can occur.  They can range from the almost total gray/black of the Russian to the Primarily yellow/black of the Corsican (aka Cordovan).  Sometimes in such subspecies hybrid crossings an entirely different color combination such as yellow/brown or tan/brown can occur.  I have Russian/Carnelian/Italian cross bees and I have noticed bees off all the color schemes I've listed, plus a few others, within the same hive.

Bees are funny creatures, what they prefer as forage crops can change from year to year.  Part of it has to do with availability of nectar source (total amount of plant available with hives forage range) to timing of blooms.  For instance: In normal years mine and the surrounding orchards go through a sequence of blooms depending on the fruit variety, first Japan Plums and Cherries, then regular cherries and plums, followed by various varieties of apples, and finally the pears. In a normal year the bees forage the blooms in sequence; cherries, plums, apples, and pears.  But this year they are all blooming at the same time my my area and as a consequence I do not expect a very good fruit set on the pears because of all the fruit tree varieties the bees have traditionally indicated a disdain for the pear if given a choice.
The same can be said of other plant varieties.  Bees will forage a plant they normally only visit nominally when other plants that traditionally bloom at the same time have bloomed earlier or later forcing the bees to choose another nectar source for that period of time.

[SerenaSYH]

Brian, wow, thanks so much for the cool information! Hey be sure to PM me or link back to this thread when you get a chance to photo some of the color intermixing you have in your hives. Thanks to your reply I was able to google the Cordovan honeybee and I found this link which talks about the Carniolan and Italian separately...Yeesh I regret my homemade term "corsican" because it looks too similar to the name Cordovan. Looking at my dark honeybee, it looks suspiciously like the Carniolan bee of this link.

http://www.glenn-apiaries.com/cordovan.html

I'm probably raiding a beemaster's blog, so if there is a Glenn here, many apologies for snatching the brood, lol!

I also saw a closeup of the tail of the Carniolan bee and it was like seeing a mirror image of mine except with superior photography versus my crappy one.

http://blueberrytalk.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/20080804-bugs-004.jpg

I also looked up the Russian honeybee that you mentioned. The Russian bee is close in that it has "dark" in the lower part with the almost olive tan, but it's got way too much wide of an upper band of yellow that's too thick. And the wings are way too long. The wings of my dark bee are identical to the Carniolan, very short, rounded, and amberish in color versus silvery light of my 2010 honeybees and the Italian bees from the links.

Brian I was telling Mshel how honeybees are divas. They will always obsess over their favorite blooms. I think since many apiarists use orchards as feeding grounds or to support a supplementary orchard business, the bees are forced into this locale of the fruiting trees because a honeybee's radius is only 5 miles from what I've googled-researched. An orchard can be very extensive and already takes up a lot of those "miles" and a bee can only fly so far. But left to themselves, feral honeybees are extremely finicky. Once they find their favorite plant they will farm that plant and nowhere else will they go until that plant is basically a stamen stub, and still they will try to milk it. And just like you describe, they "disdain" the pear and someone wrote that they don't like peach blossoms either. I've witnessed feral bees completely ignore all the fruiting trees and swarm only one particular snow fountain cherry. And they don't particularly like the other ornamental cherries-Just the Snowfountain. I used to think if I just get a very fragrant plant with open, very easily accessible stamens surely I'll get a honeybee, but boy was I wrong! Honeybees are supposed to love lilac and honeysuckle. But then I have this gorgeously showy and very fragrant flowering tree which Inga at the Rose Gallery helped me identify this week, the European Bird Cherry. This European Bird Cherry has that same lilac and honeysuckle smell and with very accessible stamens. What in the heck! no honeybee. Don't even mention my Linden tree, they disdain that too.

Here are the photos of my European Bird Cherry. The fragrance is divine and pollinators except for the honeybee love this plant. I see tons of butterflies and little wasps swarm it.



I also need to write up a question about the issues of over-hybridizations of flower species in negatively impacting the honeybee. I have a funny hunch and feeling that a lot of genetic engineering of plants may actually discourage the attractiveness of blooms to the honeybees, but that is another side issue. And I don't want to go off-topic yet.

Just the observations of colors, markings and the subspecies of honeybees being bred is already complex and interesting in of itself.

O.k. my next observation is let's say that all the bees in 2010 are from the same hive. Do feral honeybees ever get territorial in staking out their own forage areas. This can again bear weight that my honeybees are from the same hive. Even in 2011, I noticed that the holly bushes were not visited by any other honeybee besides the Carniolan. Not even a fuzzy hint of the 2010 subspecies anywhere to be glimpsed.
Also Brian, thank you for sending me the term "subspecies" I was stumped as to what to call the different colorations of each bee type. Our area doesn't have "domestic bees" unfortunately, because beehives are outlawed in Johnson County/Overland Park/Kansas City so I am assuming that the bees I have are offshoots of domestic hives that have split off and swarmed elsewhere. Unless of course there is someone secretly hiding a piece of bee paradise somewhere.

A little fun note: Brian, one of the nurseries I visited about 7 miles away has huge, healthy honeybees and they are definitely Italian, very golden, huge yellow stripings, long wings, so beautiful! Very shiny and "glittery" and Big! My dad was accompanying me to the nursery and we were both very impressed with the size of those bees. At Longwood Gardens a couple of miles away from Kansas City, Missouri, they are golden, but much smaller. That was back in 2009. Typically it seems that feral honeybees do not seem to have the huge size of an actual beeyard type of bee. Ironically, that nursery is still in Johnson County/Overland Park, so where those bees came from is a big mystery.

[Brian D. Bray]

I also need to write up a question about the issues of over-hybridizations of flower species in negatively impacting the honeybee. I have a funny hunch and feeling that a lot of genetic engineering of plants may actually discourage the attractiveness of blooms to the honeybees, but that is another side issue. And I don't want to go off-topic yet.

You have opened a can or worms with that question, a very hot topic in the beekeeping world.  The over-hybridization of flower species has been going on for centuries, just as it has been in animal husbandry, the real problem is in genetic engineering of plant species, specially food crops.  The problem with over-hybridization (in itself) seems to be limited to non-trait characteristics being carried forward in the seeds.  Meaning the plant grown from seeds do not resemble the parent plant or are mules (sterile) and unable to produce viable seed.

A company called Monesano (sp?) is the largest developer of insecticides, pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides in the world.  In the 1990's they began DNA splicing using the genes of one plant that seemed to be resistant to specific enviromental dangers and splicing them into food crops to improve harvest.  The iimport of this is a industry in gagillion dollar range world wide annually.
The problem as it has developed has lead a number of countries to ban certain chemicals used in pest control or to ban certain food seeds of GMO (Genetically Modified Organisms) crops. 
GMO Food crops with DNA spliced from other plants that seem to have a built in pooisons consisting of herbicides, pesticide, or fungicide carry that peril to the Honeybee as it goes about the collection of nectar and pollen.  Since the DNA is now a part of the GMO food crop it carries that same "poison" in its cells, sap, nectar, and pollen.  Bees collect the nectar and pollen as food, and although the dosage level of the "poison" might not be fatal in the raw state or in small amounts the concentration of the nectar as it is processed from nectar (80% water) to honey (20% water) incerases the doseage concentration.  Mix that with pollinator hives moved, or exposed to, other GMO crops with different "cipoisons" that get combined with, and likewise concentrated, poisons the honey becomes more toxic by an unknown factor.  Poisons might be safe in a small doseage but that small amount can become a leathal doseage when mixed withof another non-leathal dose from another source.

I hope I made that a little clearer than mud.

[Robo]

All I know is that my 2010 honeybees did seem as if they were gradually getting glossier! less dull. Also honeybees are almost never seen in my neighborhood until I got that Russian sage. To have 2 different hives simultaneously suddenly appear to visit just 2 Russian sage would be quite a long ways to fly I would think. And I would like to note that the bees by the end of the season were super fast, vigorous, and never more did I see any dull fur.... :? And the changes were gradual. But again, this could all be psychological overenthused imaginings, so I wanted to be sure if I'm just delusional or if my eyes indeed "see what I saw..." If I was that delusional than why are the photos still showing that light pale coloration gaining in the shine and a gradually deepening of the golden striping? Any thoughts, anyone?

Most important of all, have any of you experienced beekeepers noticed a big difference for example in the shine of your bees' fur when they are from a healthy versus non-healthy hive. Do you notice changes for example when a winter-starved hive suddenly gets a good nutritional source in the spring- do you notice a change in energy, constitution, and appearance of the bees?

First of all if your queen was open mated, chances are she is carrying sperm from different strains of drones and you will see a mix of bees of different colors within the same hive (depending upon the strain of their individual fathers).

Secondly,  as bees get older,  they actually wear off their hair from rubbing against flower pedals etc.   So young bees will be very hairy and old bees, if they live long enough, will be hairless.  Of course in the spring,  you have many young bees and even the older bees have been clustering all winter and not wearing off their hair.   In the fall is when you will see a lot more hairless shiny bees.   Fall is also the time for heavy robbing and fighting which will make some bees even look heavily polished.

[SerenaSYH]

Robo, wow, I didn't realize that bees got shiny from being little "boxers-in-the-ring" hehe! All the cool things one will learn from being on this forum! I bet the rose people would be tickled to find out all these fun bee facts! Honeybees look so benignly "cute" and determined/hyperfocused on getting work done that I've always thought of them as workaholics as opposed to indulging in more "humanlike" belligerent activity like robbing and fighting amongst each other, hehe! CUTE HONEYBEES, FIGHTING? :? Sheesh! I always thought that bees mainly fought at the hives if there were intruders instead of "raiding" each other. There's too many bad predators out there so one would think they'd just band together and fight the common enemy like the hated yellowjackets. Speaking of which I need to purchase a flyswatter. The only U.S. made ones are leather not metal.... I want lethal damage, not some flimsy leather swatter against those yellowjackets! oh, well, something is still better than nothing...Saw a lone yellowjacket in my garden. DIE SUCKER DIE!!!!! me indulging in human killer instinct   :evil:

Brian, lol, I wholeheartedly agree about genetic modification carrying those bio-infiltrated pesticides, and you've made everything as clear as day to any novice reading for the first time. However, what I also noticed is that genetic modiifed crops also lose natural sugars, sweetness and develop tougher "hides" of skin to discourage pests attacks. I'm gonna start a new thread and fan some fires, lol! I think it's good to have healthy debates. Hey if our beloved bees like to be boxers, then we might as well, because sometimes things have to be talked about to open dialogue when things influence the health of our bees...Beekeeping is a science. Even flower hybridization can negatively impact a plant's attractiveness to a bee. I have a wonderful friend at the Peter Beales forum in England and this is what she wrote when we were discussing bee attractive plants for the garden.

"Another thing that I am becoming more aware of is that plant breeders can 'create' more appealing versions of traditional flowers that have lost the ability to provide pollen or nectar (the lack of which, more often than not, makes the flowers last longer in good condition) The Michaelmas daisy Monch which I used to replace an older type, has not attracted a single bee or butterfly. I am also suspicious that my dwarf type of Salvia is also lacking. I can see the day when it would be possible to walk into a garden centre with the idea of getting a collection of bee friendly plants and walk away with a collection of likely looking plants that have lost their nectar!"

But ugggh, I'm digressing and going off topic. Must stop now and start a new thread... :-X

Again, many thanks Robo and Brian!