"BEES! BEES EVERYWHERE!!"

After reading that title, those that are old enough, or have seen the movie Tommy Boy, probably thought of Chris Farley and David Spade running out of a car with Chris Farley yelling "They're ripping my flesh off!" While bees certainly do have a bad reputation for being pests, they actually have a very important to the environment. They're so important that I decided to do my FFA speech about bees when I was a freshman in high school.

Bees live in colonies in bee hives. In the hive there are three types of bees. There are the worker bees, the drone bees, and the queen bee. All of the worker bees are female. The worker bees all have tasks that change as they age such as taking care of the queen, producing wax inside the hive, or foraging pollen from the outside world. The drone bees are male bees. The male bees are only around for a short period of time. Their only job is to mate and produce offspring with a queen in a different hive. You can tell a male bee from a female bee because male bees do not have stingers! The queen bee is the only female bee that is allowed to mate. The queen bee lays about 15000 eggs per day!

Hives are usually in areas where there are a lot of flowers and plants because bees perform a very important process called pollination. During this process, the worker bees go outside of the hive to collect pollen and nectar from surrounding plants. Nectar is used to create honey for the bees and larvae to eat. Pollen is fed to bee larvae as a major source of protein. This process is crucial for plants and crops because in exchange for the pollen and nectar, the plants are pollinated, meaning they can produce their fruit or seeds. One third of all food plants are dependent on pollination by bees because if plants or crops can't reproduce, there wouldn't be enough crops or vegetation to feed the world!

Now you have some quick facts about bees to go with your memory of Tommy Boy! :)