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?

Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    ReplyDelete
  10. 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. 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. 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

Prelude to AtoZ

  From Garden of 5 Senses, Delhi [file pic] Hindsight gives an unearthly charm and order to the past. There can be pain too. A lot of things could have been different, much better, if only we possessed the wisdom of our old age back in those days. As a writer put it, Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear and a lot of those guys must have thought, “I wish I had known this some time ago.” Life is a series of errors with intermittent achievements. The only usefulness of the errors may be the lessons they teach us. Probably, that is their purpose too. We are created to err so that we learn, I dare to put it that way. I turn 64 in a month’s time. It’s not inappropriate to look back at some of the people whom life brought into my life so that I would learn certain lessons. No, I don’t mean to say that life has any such purpose or design or anything. Life is absurd. People come into your life as haphazardly as vehicles ply on your road or birds poop on your head. Some of these people change the chemist

Why I won’t vote

From Deshabhimani , Malayalam weekly Exactly a month from today is the Parliamentary election in my state of Kerala. This time, I’m not going to vote. Bernard Shaw defined democracy , with his characteristic cynicism, as “ a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve .” We elect our government in a democracy. And the government invariably sucks our blood – whichever the party is. The BJP and the Congress are like Tweedledum and Tweedledee though the former makes all sorts of other claims day in and day out. BJP = Congress + the holy cow. The holy cow has turned out to be quite a vampire and that makes a difference, no doubt. In our Prime Minister’s algebra, it is: (a+b) 2 which should be equal to a 2 and b 2 . There is an extra 2ab which is the holy cow. In George Orwell’s Animal Farm , the animals revolt against the human master and set up their own nationalist republic. Soon politics develops in the republic and some pigs become leaders. The porcine

How Arvind Kejriwal can save himself

Narendra Modi and Amit Shah have a clear vision. Eliminate all opposition. Decimate them or absorb them. My previous post [link below] showed a few people decimated by them. Today let’s look at the others: those who are saved by joining the Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP]. 1. Himanta Biswa Sarma  This guy was in Congress and faced serious charges related to the multi-crore Saradha chit fund scam. He also faced corruption charges related to drinking water supply in Guwahati. His house was raided by the Central Bureau of Investigation [CBI]. Then he switched over to BJP and all his crimes just vanished. It’s as simple as taking a dip in the Ganga and all your sins are forgiven. Today he is the chief minister of Assam. Nothing is heard of all the charges that were levelled against him. 2. Amarinder Singh  This former Captain in the Indian Army was a Congressman until Modi’s Enforcement Directorate [ED] started raiding him, his son and his son-in-law. He put an end to all those raid

The Good Old World

Book Review Title: Dukhi Dadiba and irony of fate Author: Dadi Edulji Taraporewala Translators: Aban Mukherji and Tulsi Vatsal Publisher: Ratna Books, Delhi, 2023 Pages: 314 If you want to return to the good old days of the late 19 th century, this is an ideal novel for you. This was published originally in Gujarati in 1913. It appeared as a serial before that from 1898 onwards in a periodical. The conflict between good and evil is the dominant motif though there is romance, betrayal, disappointment, regret, and pretty much of traditional morality. Reading this novel is quite like watching an old Bollywood movie, 1960s style. Ardeshir Bahadurshah, a wealthy Parsi aristocrat in Surat, dies having obligated his son Jehangir to find out his long-lost brother Rustom. Rustom was Bahadurshah’s son in his first marriage. The mother died when the boy was too small and the nurse who looked after the child vanished with it one day. Ratanmai, Bahadurshah’s present wife, takes her

Kejriwal’s Arrest in Modi’s Kurukshetra

For some mysterious reason, Arvind Kejriwal’s arrest reminded me of Haren Pandya. Maybe, because Pandya’s 21 st death anniversary is approaching (26 March). Have you forgotten Haren Pandya? He was the Home Minister of Gujarat before Narendra Modi assumed dictatorial powers in that state. Modi chose to teach humility to Pandya by making him the Minister of State for revenue. Pandya chose not to learn humility from Modi and resigned from that post in Aug 2002. Remember Gujarat of 2002? You should. A fire engulfed a train on 27 Feb 2002 killing 58 Hindu pilgrims who were returning from Ayodhya where they had gone to discover their god, not very unlike Christopher Columbus undertaking a voyage to discover India and messing it all up. What caused the fire in the train? Lord Ram knows probably. The upshot was that there was a riot in Gujarat by Hindus against Muslims. Haren Pandya is one of the BJP leaders who gave statements in many places indicting Modi for the riots. He asser