This is the VOA SpecialEnglish Agriculture Report.
Most people have heard the sound of bees among flowers. Bees livealmost everywhere in the world — except the arctic areas. Manykinds of agriculture depend on these small, social insects. Withoutbees, fruit and nut growers as well as many other farmers would nothave a crop.
There are more thantwenty-thousand kinds of bees. But only honey bees make enough honeyfor people to use. Honey bees are highly organized social insects.They work together in a group called a colony. Each colony lives ina hive. It contains one queen bee — she lays all the eggs fromwhich the members of the colony come. Each colony has only a fewhundred males, called drones. The majority of all bees in a colonyare workers, which are all females.
Bees even have a special stomach, called a honey stomach. It isused to store sweet fluid that the bees gather from flowers. Beesalso have long hairs on their body and legs. These hairs capturepollen as bees go from flower to flower. Some of the pollen is takenback to the hive. However, some is passed to the next flower. Thisis how many plants are fertilized. Pollen is the reproductivematerial of plants. Many important agricultural crops depend on beesfor fertilization.
Inside their hives, bees store sweet fluid from flowers, callednectar, and also pollen. They may even gather nectar from some otherkinds of insects. These kinds of nectar are also stored in the hive.Bees have organs that produce a fatty substance called wax. They usewax to build structures in the hive that hold eggs and store honey.
Bees make honey through a process. They add liquid from their ownmouths to the nectar they have stored in the hive. The liquid breaksdown the nectar into simple sugars. As the honey is stored, itdries. It becomes thicker and darker.
Honey can be very thin and light in color or dark and thick. Howthe honey looks depends on the kinds of flowers used by the bees.However, most honey is the easily recognized golden color. Althoughbees are often thought of as honey-makers, they provide a surprisingnumber of products. Also, their greatest economic value is infertilizing crops — not in making golden, sweet honey.
Next week, we will tell about important products provided bybees. We will also tell about problems in beekeeping.
This VOA Special English Agriculture Report was written by MarioRitter.