Adonis Diaries

The Languages of the Bees

The workers and the Queen have different languages to communicate, beside the common language that the Queen gives for instructions and the particular odor that she excrete to warn of serious danger to her and the hive.

The workers scream iiii to express imminent distress and oooo or eeee to express joy and satisfaction.

The Queen has a higher level of intelligence and plans for the future of the survival of the hive and have a wider range of color perception.

The workers can perceive blue-green, blue-violet, yellow and ultra violet (color of the sun)  colors.

The Queen can additionally see red, green, black, grey and orange.

The Queen draw an isosceles triangle, perpendicular to the movement of the sun, in the hive to indicate critical locations that only the new queen can comprehend.

At each corner of the triangle and in the center, the Queen deposits bitter honey drops of different color. The drops are made bitter in order for the workers and the males not to eat them.

The black drop in the center is mixed by the Queen from various pollens since black pollens are very scarce. This drop indicate the location of the emergency honey stock in cases of dissemination of the hive. You may harvest over 50 kilos of honey if you manage to locate the Black spot location.

The green drop indicates a water source.

The red drop indicate the location where a fire raged, even many decades ago.

The grey color indicates the location of the current hive.

In general, the white bitter drops of honey are specially manufactured for the Queen: They have high concentration of many amino acids that are great for growth. Kids who suffer from stumped growth and lack appetite are given tiny mixture doses of these droplets with regular honey.

Strong with a magnifying glass, you may recognize what the workers drew, the shape of leaves on the upper corner of each alveoli so that the new bees may learn the various plants and flowers to search for as they first leave the hive.

The new Queen sting the potential queens to death so that she become the only Queen of the hive. Mother Queen allow the new inherited queen to study and eat the bitter droplets on the triangle in order to memorize the strategic locations for the survival of the colony.

The large concentric dances of the workers indicate the distance of the fields to go after their nectars, and the smaller intersecting circles show the close areas to harvest.

Note 1: Read “The bees of the hermit” by Frederic Maatouk

Note 2: The Greek naturalist Dioscorides wrote a detailed observation book on the life of bees, focusing mainly on their communication by drawing on the wax and their dance forms.