Bee Mine
By: Becky Masterman and Bridget Mendel
Did bees invent Valentine’s Day? No, they didn’t. The vacation was in actual fact established by Pope Gelasius in AD 495 in honor of a Christian saint by the title of Valentine. However that doesn’t imply you’ll be able to’t make the most of the vacation to advertise pollinator-friendly actions at each flip, unprompted! Under are eight actions that may let your sweetheart know, “I like you, however I like pollinators extra.”
1. Pivot the dialog from romantic sentiments to chilly arduous details. The actual fact is, Saint Valentine was the patron saint of beekeepers.
2. Use the vacation to advertise pollinator variety! Stick a be aware in that field of sweets, letting your new lover know that not all pollinators are bees. Actually, a small, humble fly known as a midge is answerable for pollinating chocolate.
3. When presenting a single crimson rose to your crush, ensure to make clear that bees want flowers far more than they do. Preserve their consideration by explaining that not all roses are equally enticing to bees, and that bees want open, wild roses over extremely cultivated ones that don’t present nectar and pollen. Moreover, stem-nesting bees wish to make houses in rose stems. Actually, you might need to take again that rose as you possibly can simply as properly use it to create a solitary bee home.
4. Shock your partner when as a substitute of your normal Hallmark card that claims “Bee Mine” on the entrance, you enclose a really lengthy, handwritten clarification about how and why honey bee hearts perform. Clarify that bees have an open circulatory system that strikes hemolymph (insect blood) by way of a dorsal tube. Their coronary heart, or dorsal aorta, is of their stomach and strikes hemolymph from their stomach cavity, by the thorax to their heads whereas serving their immune system, transporting hormones and vitamins whereas facilitating thermoregulation. Honey bees are in a position to forage at comparatively excessive and low temperatures as a result of temperature regulation offered by their circulatory system.
5. When your particular somebody surprises you with a candle-lit dinner, use the chance to speak about pesticide contamination in beeswax. Whereas it might break the temper, your accomplice must know that there are most likely dozens of different chemical contaminants in these candles. The wax cappings from honey supers include fewer pesticides than wax from the brood nest. Additionally, researchers are engaged on a course of to take away many of the pesticides from beeswax (Calatayud-Vernich et al. 2019).
6. Touch upon the fleeting nature of affection by making your Valentine’s Day playing cards on flower seed paper. Your love might fade away, however your valentine card might be buried within the earth and sprout seeds as early as Might or June, offering meals for bees. To remain on message, try the ‘bee slightly punny Valentine’s Day card’ weblog publish referenced beneath for a tutorial on making the proper card for the event.
7. Whereas dropping off a field of bees on someone’s doorstep shouldn’t be all the time interpreted as merely whimsical, in some circumstances, shock bees are appreciated. Present your like to a complete stranger by giving them the present of honey bees! With apicultural packages in Honduras, Nicaragua, Peru and Guatemala, Heifer Worldwide promotes and helps sustainable neighborhood improvement. Supporting beekeeping by way of this non-profit will assist small scale farmers add further income streams by gross sales of honey and wax.
8. When you don’t have a Valentine this yr, you might take into account baking. It’s self love in one of the simplest ways. And don’t overlook, even when it’s all about you, it’s additionally concerning the bees. Promote native beekeepers by including honey to every thing you bake, or don’t bake (Sioux Honey has 5 no-bake honey goodie recipes that may save treasured time that you simply most likely must spend in your bees).
A dissection of a honey bee exhibiting the place of the dorsal vessel (coronary heart) within the stomach. Whereas hemolymph flows freely within the physique cavity, it’s circulated from the stomach to the top by way of the dorsal vessel (O’Neal and Anderson, 2016).
Picture credit score: Scott O’Neal
References and Sources
Extra about St. Valentine
https://www.historical past.com/information/6-surprising-facts-about-st-valentine
Study bee hearts and their circulatory programs
Hillyer JF, Go G. The Insect Circulatory System: Construction, Perform, and Evolution. Annu Rev Entomol. 2020 Jan 7;65:121-143. doi:10.1146/annurev-ento-011019-025003. Epub 2019 Oct 4. PMID: 31585504.
Michel J. Honey bee hearts. Proc (Bayl Univ Med C e n t ) . 2018 Dec 20; 32 (1) : 154 – 155. doi:10.1080/08998280.2018.1509578. PMID: 30956616; PMCID: PMC6442803.
Heinrich, B., & Esch, H. (1994). Thermoregulation in Bees. American Scientist, 82(2), 164–170. http://www.jstor.org/steady/29775151
Honey bee coronary heart photograph
O’Neal ST, Anderson TD. Dissection and Remark of Honey Bee Dorsal Vessel for Research of Cardiac Perform. J Vis Exp. 2016 Dec 12;(118):55029. doi:10.3791/55029. PMID: 28060305; PMCID: PMC5226400.
The place to purchase bees for others
https://www.heifer.org/weblog/st-valentine-patron-saint-of-beekeepers.html
Make Punny Beekeeper Valentines
Pesticide removing from beeswax
Calatayud-Vernich, P., VanEngelsdorp, D., & Pic , Y. (2019). Beeswax cleansing by solvent extraction of pesticides. MethodsX, 6, 980–985. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mex.2019.04.022
Valentine treats made with honey
https://siouxhoney.com/5-valentinesday-treats-made-with-honey/
Acknowledgement
The authors wish to thank Dr. Marla Spivak for useful edits and options and Scott O’Neal for granting permission to make use of his dorsal vessel photograph.
Authors
Becky Masterman led the UMN Bee Squad from 2013-2019. Bridget Mendel joined the Bee Squad in 2013 and has led this system since 2020. Images of Becky (left) and Bridget (proper) in search of their respective hives. When you would wish to contact the authors together with your Valentine’s Day success tales or different ideas, please ship an electronic mail to mindingyourbeesandcues@gmail.com
Becky Masterman
Bridget Mendel
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