Joanna Radford

by Joanna Radford Apis Mellifera

– The Unsung Hero

First Published May, 2020 There are many heroes in this world. As I think about the horticulture arena, I must give praise to my small hero that often goes unnoticed – Apis Mellifera. This is the Latin name for the European honeybee. The honeybee was brought to the United States by European settlers in the 17th century. There are over 4,000 native bees but the honeybee is not one of them. Honeybees are social insects. They prefer to live together in large groups that are multi-generational. They each have a specific task and perform it perfectly. They have developed communication, defense, and nest construction behaviors to exist in their social colonies. They are fascinating. One of their tasks is to forage for food. This task is performed by the worker bee, which is a female bee, I might add. They collect food for the other adult bees in the hive and for the brood (developing bees). As they collect nectar, pollen attaches to the hairs on the honeybee and is transferred from plant to plant. Eighty percent of all flowering plants require animal pollinators. Honeybees are essential to the production of more than 90 crops in the United States. There are 750,000 plus acres of almonds in Central California requiring 1.5 million colonies of honeybees for pollination. No honeybee means no almond production. There are 72,000 acres of blueberries across the United States that require 150,000 colonies of honeybees for pollination. Blueberries are among North Carolina’s most important crops. And, to bring home the point even more, one out of every three bites of food we eat daily can be attributed to pollinators. Am I getting your attention? The honeybee is important to us all. Besides blueberries, there are numerous North Carolina crops that depend on honeybees for pollination. Some of these include apples, cucumbers, squash, pumpkin, watermelon, strawberries, peaches, blackberries, and raspberries. Pollination may not occur with just one visit from the honeybee. It is quite a job. Think about a strawberry. The small specks surrounding the strawberry are the seeds. Each seed must be pollinated for that berry to form and mature. That is a lot of work for the honeybee. And, for some crops, like cucumbers, the lack of honeybee pollination causes misshapen or underdeveloped fruit. Not only does the cucumber look funny it has an off-flavor. Think about what our grocery stores would look like without the honeybee. The variety in the store would be minimal. The shelves might only consist of pasta. This might be acceptable for some of us but without tomato sauce it may be less appealing. Honeybees not only pollinate food sources but also provide beneficial by-products. They are the only insect that I know of that provides food (honey) for human consumption. They also produce wax that can be used for cosmetics, lip gloss, hand creams, moisturizes, lip balm, and the list goes on. And miraculously, honeybee products (propolis, royal jelly, etc.) can be used as medicine. Yes, honeybee, you are my hero.

A partially pollinated cucumber (top) compared with a completely pollinated one (bottom). The seed did not form throughout the poorly pollinated cucumber and consequently the fruit did not grow around that portion. Photo Credit: NC State University