Ingo Arndt - Wild Honey Bees: An Intimate Portrait

WILD HONEY BEES

An Intimate Portrait

With photography by INGO ARNDT

and text by JRGEN TAUTZ

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Princeton and Oxford

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Ingo Arndt is one of the worlds top nature photographers. His work appears in international magazines and newspapers such as GEO, Stern, National Geographic and BBC Wildlife. His photographs have won numerous prizes, including a World Press Photo Award. He has won the Wildlife Photographer of the Year Award several times.

Prof. Dr Jrgen Tautz is a behavioural scientist, sociobiologist and bee expert. He is a Professor at the Biocenter of the Biozentrum der Julius-Maximilians-Universitt in Wrzburg and chairman of its bee research group. Tautz is the author of several popular science books on bees and holder of the Communicator Award of the DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft German Research Foundation).

I THINK EVERYONE NEEDS HONEY BEES, at least a little. Watching them bobbing on flowers as they collect their nectar and pollen, or gathering water at the edge of a small stream, or zipping in and out of their fortress-like homes, can give us a daily measure of wonder and a glimpse of how life goes on beyond our human affairs. This is especially true for the colonies of honey bees that live wild and free, nesting in hollow trees hidden deep in forests. The behaviour, social life and ecology of these free-living honey bees is the subject of the marvellous book that you now hold in your hands. Behavioural biologist Jrgen Tautz and wildlife photographer Ingo Arndt have teamed up to take readers on a stunning visual journey that reveals with unsurpassed beauty the natural history of Apis mellifera, our greatest friend among the insects.

Thomas D. Seeley

Professor in Biology, Department of Neurobiology and Behavior,

Cornell University

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Honey bees can obtain important information about their surroundings using their compound eyes, feelers and countless sensory hairs in order to carry out their day-to-day tasks.

Worker bees loading up with water needed to cool their colony's nest on a hot day.

Inspecting an empty cell clarifies what needs to be done.

View of freshly made combs in a honey bee nest inside a tree cavity.

Bee nest in an abandoned black woodpecker nest, high above the forest floor.

INTRODUCTION

The cold season stops most insects in their tracks. They survive chilled and in a state of suspended animation under loose tree bark or buried in the ground. They survive as eggs, larvae, in the pupal stage, or even as fully developed insects, like the future queens of wasps, hornets or bumble bees, the only members of their species not to die in the autumn.

In contrast, colonies of honey bees spend the winter well protected and, by generating their own heat, snugly tucked into hollow trees in the forest. At least that was their natural habitat until humans began transforming the world at large and that of the bees with it. Ever since beekeepers began housing honey bees in hives, these insects have been known mainly as ones that live in hives.

But wild, forest-dwelling honey bees do still exist in hollow trees even in temperate latitudes. And they are more important and valuable than ever before, especially now when the significance of preserving the biodiversity in our forests is more widely understood, and knowledge of the biology of wild bees could help to reshape the practice of beekeeping.

We set out on the trail of wild honey bees, observing and photographing their behaviour, and in doing so obtaining insights into hitherto unknown details of their way of life. During our research we were out and about in forests, where we encountered Apis mellifera, the western honey bee. In addition to this species, there are many other species of bees around the world, of which the eastern or Asiatic honey bee is the most important, occurring primarily in Asia and being responsible for transmitting a dangerous parasite to our bee colonies the Varroa mite.

A remarkable number of wild honey bee colonies still exist, living in hollow trees inside the forest, largely unnoticed by humans and in greatly underestimated numbers. They live in conditions that have shaped their characteristics and abilities across countless generations. Therefore, given everything we know today, it should come as no surprise that these honey bees, original dwellers of the forest, are better able to cope with diseases and parasites than our pet bees. They have no choice in the matter as there is no beekeeper there to help them. Nature provides them with what they need to survive and multiply.

If one takes a closer look at honey bees in the forest, in their ancestral habitat, it quickly becomes clear that they are deeply integrated in highly complex relationships and play a paramount role in the preservation and structure of their environment.

Habitats are especially stable when they are based on a variety of species of flora, fauna and microorganisms, which are all interlinked and interdependent. The forest is no exception.

A bee collecting honeydew on a fir tree, which will be converted into forest honey back in the bees nest.