[Today’s run: 5 miles – Schaffer’s Chapel]
A bee starts off as a larva. It is fed, then capped off. Kind of like when a caterpillar turns into a butterfly. Then the bee becomes a bee.
At first the bee’s job is to take care of the nursery and the other new bees and larva. Some bees also get to attend to the needs of the queen. All of this happens in the brood area of the hive.
The bee then graduates to taking care of the honey storage. After that it may become involved with hive security, comb building and hive maintenance (plugging holes, etc.)
Finally the bee gets to start flying out to look for honey and water. It flies out and follows the directions of other bees. It may then branch off and try to find its own nectar and pollen sources. It brings back pollen/nectar and makes reports to the other fliers.
After a certain amount of flying the bees wings get eroded and it cannot fly very well. It keeps going out but has a harder and harder time getting airborne. Eventually the bee goes away from the hive but cannot fly back. It may start to walk back, but won’t make it back.
So bees eventually fly out and not come back. Sounds like kind of a sad story to me. But maybe the bees don’t mind.