NATURE

Bees are brilliant and a much-needed species. And it’s thanks to wasps from which they evolved.

DO you know what Aristotle, George Washington, Leo Tolstoy, Sherlock Holmes and Scarlett Johansson have in common?

If you didn’t you might be surprised to hear that they were (or are) all beekeepers.

This lively, engaging book shows the human fascination with bees has deep roots. Stone Age art, from Africa to Europe and further afield to Australia, depicts honey-hunting expeditions. People kept bees before they tamed horses. The Hittites imposed fines on anyone caught stealing from hives. The Greeks had honey taxes.

Bees have long been central to our eating habits. “It’s often said,” Hanson remarks, “that every third bite of food in the human diet relies upon bees.”

He includes a table of 150 crops which either need or benefit from pollination by bees. They range from apricots to tomatoes and turnips.

Mead, brewed from honey, is one of mankind’s oldest tipples. People have been drinking it for at least 9,000 years. The ancient Chinese downed a version laced with rice and hawthorn berries; the Celts preferred theirs flavoured with hazelnuts.

The Mayans of Central America went one better and produced hallucinogenic varieties, spiked with narcotic roots.

Bee products have also proved invaluable in traditional healing. Of 1,000 prescriptions in a 12th-century volume entitled The Book Of Medicines, more than 350 made use of them. Honey was thought to be a remedy for everything from hiccups to a low sperm count. Beeswax could be used to treat loose teeth, aching testicles and sword wounds.

It’s little wonder that bees figure prominently in various mythologies. In some Greek myths, the god Zeus was raised by wild bees who fed him on nectar and honey. In cultures across the world, the buzzing of bees was interpreted as the voices of departed souls.

Bees are certainly remarkable creatures. They evolved from wasps. The first unequivocal bees appear in the fossil record about 70 million years ago. There are now around 20,000 different species around the globe.

Their antennae tune into chemicals which signal everything from potential meals to potential mates. Their wings can flap more than 200 times a second. One species of bumblebee can hover at elevations higher than the peak of Everest.

Bees, of course, evolved in tandem with the flowers on which they feed and which in turn depend on them to spread their pollen. In one sense, the colours of flowers reflect the nature of bees’ eyesight.

The prevalence of blues and golds in flowers is no chance matter. These shades fall right in the middle of a bee’s visual spectrum. On remote islands where there are few, if any bees, flowers are drab and colourless.

The development of scented flowers is also interwoven with bees’ ability to sense them. As Hanson puts it, “The fact that bees prefer odours we find worthy of poetry, counts as one of nature’s happier accidents.”

Plants need to attract bees to help them pollinate. They have devised any number of cunning strategies to do so. Some include caffeine in their nectar to get bees addicted to visiting them.

There are varieties of orchids which mimic the body shapes and scents of female bees to lure lustful male bees towards them.

The behaviour was recorded in the 19th century but prudish naturalists, including Charles Darwin, were puzzled. They thought the bees were attacking the orchids. They didn’t realise that they were actually trying to have sex with them.

BEES are now big business, particularly in the U.S. For a price, honeybees are sent by truck around the country, so farmers can improve bee-dependent crops. More than 10 million bees can be on a single truck.

Much publicity has been given in recent years to the alarming decline in bee numbers – so-called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Hanson acknowledges the concerns, but he is ultimately optimistic about the future. He is also a charmingly enthusiastic bee fanatic and his book is delightful to read.

– Buzz by Thor Hanson is published by Icon for £16.99