Beehive Project Observation by Kyle

Bees are interesting creatures with complexity in terms of behaviors and physiology. This beehives project had given me the opportunity to observe bees and their hives, and learned quite a lot about them. Most importantly, I can link many ecological aspects to analyse and understand the bee colony.

By observing how bees interact with one another, I observed that there is a little ecology in the bee's colony. This is due the fact that there seemed to me three types of bees in the colony and each type is dependent on each other; hence, acting as biotic factors. The types of bee encompass a female queen, female workers, and male drones. Female queen functions to lay eggs. Female workers build cells, and collect pollen to name a few. Male drones defend the colony and help the queen reproduce. From this we can see that male drones and female workers also function to interact with other species such as flowers and animals. Everything here is interconnected.

I also learned that the distribution of bees can be influenced by exposing them to smoke that they tend to avoid it. Smoke itself here is an abiotic factor.  The following picture is taken by Shawna illustrating how Gwen, our professor influence the bee to go inside of the hive by using smoke.

Furthermore, from the observation, I seemed to notice other insects living in close proximity with the bees. However, the type of interaction between bees and them have yet to be determined.

In relation to how human are interacting with the bees, human can sure benefit from extracting honey from the hives which is rich in carbohydrates. What I found from this observation was that there is another substance rich in proteins produced by bees. Apparently, this can benefit human with respect to providing a source of protein. Nevertheless, it uncertain whether this substance is harmful or not. And whether the taste is pleasant. If not, should genetic engineering affects human positively? Does exposing bees to different condition affects the quality of the production? Answers to these questions maybe helpful to food and health industries.
   
All in all, this bee project have made me gaining more insight into how ecology works. The real life application. A sincere thank you to Gwen for the teaching, hard work, enthusiasm and knowledge. Thanks to Shawna for the picture.