Honey Bees

The image is of the eye of a European honey bee. It is from the book "The Buzz about Bees, Biology of a Superorganism", by Jurgen Tautz, pictures by Helga R. Heilmann and published by Springer in 2008.

The good news comes from an article in the Guardian Weekly dated 31 December, 2010 to 6 January, 2011 on page 2.

" A breakthrough has been made in the battle against the varroa mite responsible for decimating honey bee populations. Scientists at Britain's National Bee Unit and Aberdeen University have found how to "silence" natural functions in the mites' genes so they self-destruct."

Luckily in Australia we do not have the mite yet! We hope we never have it but New Zealand has. The mite has destroyed many colonies of bees in the United States. They also have Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) as well in the US. My bees here in TARADALE, Victoria, are doing fine. The winter and spring this year, 2010, was very wet and they got off to a slow start. But there was so much food about that almost every hive swarmed.

Professor Jurgen Tautz refers to the bee colony as "a mammal in many bodies." They are intelligent creatures. Here's an example. A couple of years ago I opened a hive of bees to have a look. After about twenty I closed them up and left the apiary. A couple of hours later I was down in the garden about 20 metres from the hive I previously opened. I happened to look up towards the hive and suddenly a bee from the hive spotted me and made a bee-line over and stung me on the neck. So she had remembered me and recognized me without my bee suit on. That pretty smart for one tiny creature. So bees are conscious I'm sure.

Ray Kurzweil has been telling us since about 1990 that computers will soon be able talk with us. What he means that they will possess consciousness. Bees are conscious but they have little brains. I say Ray, there's no way that is going to happen, doesn't matter how much grunt the computer has.