Читать книгу Beekeeping For Dummies - Howland Blackiston - Страница 60

Royal jelly is the powerful, creamy substance that transforms an ordinary worker-bee egg into a queen bee and extends her life span from six weeks to several years! It’s made of digested pollen and honey or nectar mixed with a chemical secreted from a gland in a nurse bee’s head.

In health-food stores it commands premium prices, rivaling imported caviar. Those in the know use royal jelly as a dietary supplement and fertility stimulant. It contains an abundance of nutrients, including essential minerals, B-complex vitamins, proteins, amino acids, collagen, and essential fatty acids, just to name a few!

The workers also perform another kind of fanning, but it isn’t related to climate control. It has more to do with communication. The bees have a scent gland located at the end of their abdomen called the Nasonov gland. You’ll see worker bees at the entrance with their abdomens arched and the moist pink membrane of this gland exposed (see Figure 2-7). They fan their wings to release this pleasant, sweet odor into the air. You can actually smell it sometimes as you approach the hive. The pheromone is highly attractive and stimulating to other bees and serves as an orientation message to returning foragers, saying: “Come hither, this is your hive and where you belong.”

Beekeepers can purchase synthetic queen-bee pheromone and use this chemical to lure swarms of bees into a trap. The captured swarm then can be used to populate a new hive.

Courtesy of Bee Culture Magazine

FIGURE 2-7: This worker bee fans her wings while exposing her Nasonov gland to release a sweet orientation scent. This helps direct other members of the colony back to the hive.