The Life of a Honeybee
When your life is only six weeks long, you’ve got to live it intentionally. The life of an Adee honeybee is just that—filled with flowers, pollen and one very sweet purpose. Keep reading to get a glimpse at the average day in the life of Blossom, an Adee Honey Farms bee.
Wakey, Wakey!
At the crack of dawn, Blossom is up and at it—there’s work to be done. Instead of locating water or standing guard at the hive, Blossom has been assigned the task of pollination. It’s no easy job to collect pollen, but she’s up for the challenge. After a nice big bee stretch, she flutters into the outside world from the safety of her hive.
Like most bees, Blossom is a pro at recognizing colors, patterns and smells. This helps her find the best food and plants for pollination. Blossom remembers a field just down the road with one of her favorites: sweet clover. After landing on these bee-utiful yellow flowers, the hairs on her body start picking up pollen with the help of electrostatics. The pollen is funneled into little pockets on her legs and body for the trip home.
How does she get home, you ask? Blossom uses her solar compass to figure out where she is in relation to the sun. It’s a bit cloudy outside this morning, but Blossom can see polarized light even with the sun obscured. She uses her internal clock to see how much the sun has moved (and thus, how long it’s been) since she got here. She makes a bee-line back to the hive (all full of pollen) to tell her friends where the food is.
A Mid-Day Waggle
Blossom has made it back to the hive without a scratch. Her honeybee sisters rush to help her unload her pockets full of pollen. Everyone in the hive is curious where she got such great proteins. Blossom is happy to share, so she heads to the dance floor.
Blossom has two options: the round dance and the waggle dance. The round dance indicates food is nearby, but her clover field was a bit of a hike. So she decides to use the waggle dance, telling her sisters the food is far away but worth the travel. Blossom runs in a downward line while shaking her bee-hind, then quickly loops back to the starting point. This tells her bee buddies that the food can be found by flying away from the sun and that the food source is superb.
Cue the Afternoon Activities
Blossom makes a couple trips back to the field of clover, being careful to avoid potential predators. In case of an attack, Blossom is prepared to flap her wings nearly 230 beats per second and fly 20 miles per hour. If you’re wondering, she did fly track in high school.
Blossom's wings are tired and sore from a long day’s work. She decides to do some basic housekeeping in the hive for the rest of the afternoon. It’s important that she cleans out used cells to prevent disease in the hive and make room for new honey and eggs. It also comes to her attention that the coats of her bee buddies are looking a little rough. Blossom, being the sweet bee she is, picks over their coats and gets them all spiffed up.
Time to Hit the Hive
Blossom welcomes her crew back for the night with some hive fives. As she snuggles up next to her sisters, the night shifters are waking up—the work never ends. Blossom needs to rest up to tackle another day of pollination tomorrow. Here come the Zs…
The best thing about following Blossom (Adee Honey’s MVB) is that you can taste the final product she worked so hard to make—it’s all the buzz right now.
