BEES, NECTAR & POLLEN
BEES ARE BEST known for their honey, wax, pollinating flowers, the dance they do to instruct fellow workers where to find rich sources of nectar, cleaning their hives and burying their dead, having a social organization that is more Pharonic than democratic, and for their sting. For how long mankind has shown an interest in bees, practical and aesthetic, we cannot say, but how charming are these few lines from the ancient Greek playwright, Aristophanes (446-c.388 BC):
Active, eager, airy thing
Ever hovering on the wing.
What is worrisome is that while the very continuation of a green Earth in temperate and scrubland vegetational zones is in large measure dependent on bees - they pollinate the plants that set the seeds, that become the plants, that hold the soil and moderate the climate, and they pollinate much of man's fruit and vegetables as well - their nesting sites and food sources are being destroyed by urbanization and overuse of insecticides.
Ants, bees and wasps are related; bees differ from nearly all wasps in their dependence on pollen for protein to feed their larvae. Fossil remains in rock and amber take the bee back 50 million years. The Mexican apifauna is startlingly rich, yet little is known about its ecology. Nor do we know what species most commonly live in El Charco.