Skip to main content

Thirst

The temperature is soaring in Delhi.  It's less than a month since we, Delhiites, cleaned our woolens and shoved them into the remote parts of the almirah and pulled out the cotton linen for the summer.  The temperature rises at the rate of one degree Celsius per day.  The very air outside scorches your skin.

It was not surprising to see honey bees trying to suck water at the taps outside the school's dining hall this morning.  The bees were not worried about the boys coming to wash their hands.  They flew away letting the boys wash and came back as soon as the boys were away.

I became curious about the honey bees' requirement of water. A simple Google search gave me the following information: [courtesy: http://www.glenn-apiaries.com/bee_photos_10.html]
Honey bees collect four substances, nectar to turn into honey for their food source, pollen as a protein source to rear the baby bees, propolis to seal crevices and coat the inside of the hive with an antimicorobrial coating, and water to mix with the baby bees' food and also to cool the hive.

A clean supply of water is absolutely essential for the operation of a honeybee colony. Bees use water for cooling the hive by evaporation, and for thinning honey to be fed to larva. Bees collecting water is almost as common a sight as bees on flowers. A strong hive on a hot day can use over a quart of water a day, this occupies 800 workers each making up to 50 trips to the water hole a day.

Human beings encroached into the realms of animals far beyond the desirable limits. Are they coming back to recapture their rightful areas?
Labels:

Comments

  1. MridulaMay 2, 2014 at 1:01 PM

    I leave some water for birds in an earthen pot but never gave a thought to the bees!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 2, 2014 at 1:16 PM

      This is the first time that I saw bees haunting water taps.

      Delete
  2. ManiparnaMay 2, 2014 at 3:00 PM

    First time for me too :-O..

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 2, 2014 at 9:00 PM

      As we keep on creating a hotter and drier and more polluted world, there will be more 'firsts' coming, Maniparna.

      Delete
  3. UnknownMay 2, 2014 at 3:18 PM

    Even I didn't know about this. Temperature's soaring high in Durgapur as well. It's around 43 degree Celsius here. That last line of this article might be true and who knows what we would get to see in the future!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 2, 2014 at 9:01 PM

      Yes, Namrata, we may have a bizarre future ahead, who knows!

      Delete
  4. UnknownMay 2, 2014 at 4:07 PM

    I never knew about this :O

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 2, 2014 at 9:02 PM

      We will keep learning, Pankti. Probably, as we go ahead Nature will have much to teach us.

      Delete
  5. Poonam KhandujaMay 2, 2014 at 9:22 PM

    Learnt about a new face of nature, today. :)

    ReplyDelete
  6. wingsMay 2, 2014 at 9:29 PM

    That's a wonderful research! It means, we won't be having honey of good quality in future due to scarcity of water!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 3, 2014 at 8:21 AM

      But, as I understand, honey bees won't take dirty water. Will they choose to die rather than take dirty water? I can't answer that.

      Delete
    2. wingsMay 3, 2014 at 5:53 PM

      No, I did not mean dirty water, sir. I meant that scarcity of water may lead honey bees to maintain their hives poorly.

      Delete
    3. Tomichan MatheikalMay 3, 2014 at 8:41 PM

      Yeah, M. But who will survive in the long run? Bees or man?

      You know, I'm foreseeing a time when animals will take over the planet. H G Wells envisaged it a century back in his novel, Time Machine.

      Delete
    4. wingsMay 5, 2014 at 7:57 PM

      In a lighter vein, may I say men will become animals?.......:)

      Delete
    5. Tomichan MatheikalMay 5, 2014 at 9:53 PM

      :) Haven't they already?

      Delete
  7. VetirmagalMay 3, 2014 at 7:08 AM

    Yes, this is happening in our terrace pipe too. Few of them are always there. Now after a few weeks I see a big beehive in the neighbour's tree.( a few feet away) Leaky taps do help . They dont sting , even when we open the tap . They wait and come back!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 3, 2014 at 8:22 AM

      Exactly, Pattu, even I was surprised that when the students opened the tap the bees didn't attack them, they just flew away only to come back a little later.

      Delete
  8. AmitAagMay 3, 2014 at 10:41 AM

    What a shameful crime on our part! The unmindful human progress(?) and so called development is causing irreparable loss to nature:(

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 3, 2014 at 11:49 AM

      It is indeed a serious affair, Amit. We have done a lot of damage to Nature, some of which are irreparable. I'm sure Nature will come back to haunt us in many ways.

      Delete
  9. IndraniMay 3, 2014 at 10:51 AM

    Great observation, I have seen some of them landing in my water pools.

    ReplyDelete
  10. NirMay 3, 2014 at 9:11 PM

    that is some cool info... though i don't think those bees could threaten humanity.. they will probably just die... which is also sad...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 4, 2014 at 11:37 AM

      They will die, Nir. Yes, that's the sad fact. I saw them dying under those water taps. I've been watching them.

      Delete
  11. JayantaMay 4, 2014 at 12:47 AM

    Dear Tomichan, I nominated you for Sunshine Blog award for your powerful topics and writings..Do check my post on the topic :-).

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
19 comments
Read more

India in Modi-Trap

That’s like harnessing a telescope to a Vedic chant and expecting the stars to spin closer. Illustration by Gemini AI A friend forwarded a WhatsApp message written by K Sahadevan, Malayalam writer and social activist. The central theme is a concern for science education and research in India. The writer bemoans the fact that in India science is in a prison conjured up by Narendra Modi. The message shocked me. I hadn’t been aware of many things mentioned therein. Modi is making use of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan’s Centre for Study and Research in Indology for his nefarious purposes projected as efforts to “preserve and promote classical Indian knowledge systems [IKS]” which include Sanskrit, Ayurveda, Jyotisha (astrology), literature, philosophy, and ancient sciences and technology. The objective is to integrate science with spirituality and cultural values. That’s like harnessing a telescope to a Vedic chant and expecting the stars to spin closer. The IKS curricula have made umpteen r...
8 comments
Read more

Two Women and Their Frustrations

Illustration by Gemini AI Nora and Millie are two unforgettable women in literature. Both are frustrated with their married life, though Nora’s frustration is a late experience. How they deal with their personal situations is worth a deep study. One redeems herself while the other destroys herself as well as her husband. Nora is the protagonist of Henrik Ibsen’s play, A Doll’s House , and Millie is her counterpart in Terence Rattigan’s play, The Browning Version . [The links take you to the respective text.] Personal frustration leads one to growth into an enlightened selfhood while it embitters the other. Nora’s story is emancipatory and Millie’s is destructive. Nora questions patriarchal oppression and liberates herself from it with equanimity, while Millie is trapped in a meaningless relationship. Since I have summarised these plays in earlier posts, now I’m moving on to a discussion on the enlightening contrasts between these two characters. If you’re interested in the plot ...
13 comments
Read more

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...
16 comments
Read more