bees.njk

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            <h3>Honey bee</h3>
            <p><img src="/images/bee.jpg" alt="bee"> A honey bee (also spelled honeybee) is a eusocial flying insect
                within the genus Apis of the bee clade, all native to Eurasia. They are known for their construction of
                perennial colonial nests from wax, the large size of their colonies, and surplus production and storage
                of honey, distinguishing their hives as a prized foraging target of many animals, including honey
                badgers, bears and human hunter-gatherers. Only eight surviving species of honey bee are recognized,
                with a total of 43 subspecies, though historically 7 to 11 species are recognized. Honey bees represent
                only a small fraction of the roughly 20,000 known species of bees.</p>
            <p>The best known honey bee is the western honey bee (Apis mellifera), which has been domesticated for honey
                production and crop pollination; the only other domesticated bee is the eastern honey bee (Apis cerana),
                which occurs in South Asia. Some other types of related bees produce and store honey, and have been kept
                by humans for that purpose, including the stingless bees, but only members of the genus Apis are true
                honey bees. Modern humans also value the wax for use in making candles, soap, lip balms, and various
                cosmetics.</p>
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            <h3>Life cycle</h3>
            <p>As in a few other types of eusocial bees, a colony generally contains one queen bee, a female; seasonally
                up to a few thousand drone bees, or males; and tens of thousands of female worker bees. Details vary
                among the different species of honey bees, but common features include:</p>
            <ol>
                <li><img src="/images/bee-eggs.jpg" alt="honey bee eggs shown in opened wax cells">Eggs are laid singly
                    in a cell in a wax honeycomb, produced and shaped by the worker bees. Using her spermatheca, the
                    queen can choose to fertilize the egg she is laying, usually depending on which cell she is laying
                    it into. Drones develop from unfertilised eggs and are haploid, while females (queens and worker
                    bees) develop from fertilised eggs and are diploid. Larvae are initially fed with royal jelly
                    produced by worker bees, later switching to honey and pollen. The exception is a larva fed solely on
                    royal jelly, which will develop into a queen bee. The larva undergoes several moultings before
                    spinning a cocoon within the cell, and pupating.</li>
                <li><img src="/images/bee-larvae.jpg" alt="eggs and larvae">Young worker bees, sometimes called "nurse
                    bees", clean the hive and feed the larvae. When their royal jelly-producing glands begin to atrophy,
                    they begin building comb cells. They progress to other within-colony tasks as they become older,
                    such as receiving nectar and pollen from foragers, and guarding the hive. Later still, a worker
                    takes her first orientation flights and finally leaves the hive and typically spends the remainder
                    of her life as a forager.</li>
                <li><img src="/images/drones.jpg" alt="drone pupae">Worker bees cooperate to find food and use a pattern
                    of "dancing" (known as the bee dance or waggle dance) to communicate information regarding resources
                    with each other; this dance varies from species to species, but all living species of Apis exhibit
                    some form of the behavior. If the resources are very close to the hive, they may also exhibit a less
                    specific dance commonly known as the "round dance".</li>
                <li>Honey bees also perform tremble dances, which recruit receiver bees to collect nectar from returning
                    foragers.</li>
                <li>Virgin queens go on mating flights away from their home colony to a drone congregation area, and
                    mate with multiple drones before returning. The drones die in the act of mating. Queen honey bees do
                    not mate with drones from their home colony.</li>
                <li><img src="/images/bee-birth.jpg" alt="emergence of a european dark honey bee">Colonies are
                    established not by solitary queens, as in most bees, but by groups known as "swarms", which consist
                    of a mated queen and a large contingent of worker bees. This group moves en masse to a nest site
                    which was scouted by worker bees beforehand and whose location is communicated with a special type
                    of dance. Once the swarm arrives, they immediately construct a new wax comb and begin to raise new
                    worker brood. This type of nest founding is not seen in any other living bee genus, though several
                    groups of vespid wasps also found new nests by swarming (sometimes including multiple queens). Also,
                    stingless bees will start new nests with large numbers of worker bees, but the nest is constructed
                    before a queen is escorted to the site, and this worker force is not a true "swarm".</li>
            </ol>
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