Solo [The Sanctuary] All Creatures Great And Small (Pt 2)

[Kavala]

Continued from [The Sanctuary] All Things Bright And Beautiful (Pt 1)
Timestamp: 74th of Fall, 512 AV

The next section of Kavala's studies required her to learn about the bees themselves. She was fairly confident about the parts of their hive and how the hive was set up, but when it came to insects, Kavala knew next to nothing about them. She barely knew the difference between hornets, wasps, and bees though the book touched on it a bit.

Wasps and hornets differed from bees considerably. While physically the main difference was the lack of body hair (while bees had hair) and much thinner elongated bodies. The differences between hornets, wasps, and yellowjackets were more behavioral. A three wasps, horents and yellowjackets had narrow wings that folded longitudinally when they weren't flying. All three have larvae reared on dead or living insect prey. And all three constructed nests of recycled wood fibers. Worse than that though was that all three had the ability to sting repeatedly. Wasps live in colonies of less than a hundred, while both yellowjacket and hornet colonies grew considerably larger than that.

Kavala took notes. There was a bee string section, but she'd come back to it after she learned more about her bees.

Honey bees, it seemed, could sting only one before they died. And it seemed the vast majority of bees, even those that did not make honey people could use, posed no threat to anyone anywhere. That was reassuring to Kavala. They were gentle creatures, that tended to do well living among people and being tended by them. Kavala read on. She read a bunch of interesting facts about honey bees, such as there were different varieties (she'd go back later and study them). She also learned that the bee hive is perennial, meaning it was active during the three seasons of the year, but in the winter goes almost dormant, with the bees surviving by grouping together to keep warm.

Honeybees are not aggressive by nature, and will not sting unless they are trying to protect their hive from an intruder or are being harassed by an intruder, such as a bear trying to collect honey. That made sense to Kavala. She knew they could potentially have hives all over The Sanctuary and still not have the bees be a threat to people. She needed the honey though, for it cost her a fortune to get the stuff they needed supplied to the facility from beekeepers elsewhere. Too much medicine depended on honey, that much was for sure. And any excess she could sell or perhaps one of the other denizens would take up a hobby like making other products from honey. The Konti had even heard of people making alcohol from it.

But back to the bees... Honeybees have a highly organized society, with various bees having very specific duties during their existence. Bees were born to be food gatherers, hunters, defenders, nurses, and even simply to lay eggs and be queens. Kavala was fascinated. She turned to the section on honeybee castes. Caste? Ahh... groups in a society.

There are three types of honeybees in a hive. There are no other types but these three. They consist of a queen, a worker, and a drone. Each caste has a very specific role and each member of that caste is born to that caste. There is no switching castes or changing the nature of the bee.

So, the queen. Kavala turned to the section on queens and read about them first. She was dismayed because the name really was deceptive. The Queens didn't rule the hive like she'd suspected. They instead were more like Nakivak, captive breeders with only that one job to do for the whole of their lives. They were never alone, always attended by nurses, and were responsible for repopulating the entire hive. There was supposedly only one Queen per hive. And without her, there was no chance a hive would survive. In fact, according to what she read, the bees would abandon a hive with no queen or where one had died. According to the diagram in the book, it looked like the queen was very different in size and shape from the rest of the bees. Larger and longer, she looked like she could take on an army of the other two. But in reading further, Kavala discovered it was because of her shape that she could back into a long deep cell and lay an egg at the back of it. Beekepers were supposed to examine hives every two weeks to make sure the Queen was still alive and if she wasn't, replace her immediately or risk loosing the hive.

It was hard to find her too, even though she was bigger. There was just so many eggs. But the book gave her two key things to look for. The queen was always in a little space by herself, ringed with attendants that faced her. So, to find the queen you actually just looked for a ring of bees and a clear spot with one bee in the center. That seemed easy enough to Kavala. The other way to know a Queen was in good health was to check for newly laid eggs. The eggs looked like tiny white specks or seeds at the bottom of each cell. And because The Queen was supposed to live a long time - significantly longer than drones or workers - she could be in attendance of the hive for upwards of three to four years.

But she never left. She never did anything but lay. That was her sole purpose in life. Kavala was slightly depressed about it. Had the Akalaks based the Nakivaks off Queen Bees? She read on.

[Kavala]

In terms of stingers, it seemed the queen did have one. But, unlike other bees, it doesn’t seem to have a barb. The queen only used her stinger, according to Kavala’s book, to fend off other queens that hatch in her hive or invade form outside hives. Beekeepers were rarely stung by queens. And many pick them up, manipulate them, check them for health or even paint white dots on them to easier identify them, and never get hurt.

This was a thought that reassured Kavala. She’d seen many Drykas’ ride through nests of ground bees and hornets and that made her nervous because sometimes the result could be deadly.

It seemed the second largest bee in the hive besides the Queen was a Drone. Drones were males. They really served two main purposes in a hive. The primary role of the drone honeybee is mainly to mate with a queen. They rarely mated with their own queen as is often assumed, but instead mate with any other queen that is in need from outside hives.

Drones don't serve the role of foraging, or feeding brood, they are the most expendable member of the colony. Besides mating the Queen, Drones act as a catch all for diseases and parasites that exist in the world for bees.
Drones were only found in hives during the spring and summer. In early fall the Drones are no longer needed to mate with queens. Once their purpose was over, worker bees would routinely drag them from the hive, banish them outright, and let them starve. If they tried to come back in, they’d be killed. Once Drones had mated, they became a drain on the hive resources. And since they didn’t contribute otherwise, they were exiled seasonally from all hives everywhere completely – regardless of whether they were a member of that hive or not..

Kavala sighed. It was too bad all useless men couldn’t be treated thusly.
She was curious about Drone stings and the physical differences in the Drones. Reading further, the book had a great section on describing these interesting denizens.

Drones are different in size and shape from workers in that they have stockier bodies. Their eyes are larger and their overall bodies are far darker in color. Drones do not have stingers. They cannot sting in any way shape or form. And unlike workers and queens, Drones do not stay in one hive. They are hatched out and move from hive to hive looking for Queens to mate. They are universally welcomed anywhere during bee mating season. Once a queen has mated with several drones during her mating flight, she will never need to mate again but have enough of the male’s seed stored to fertilize eggs for another two years until she dies.

Drones live around ninety days in fall. In some varieties of bees, towards winter as fall wraps up, workers will actually kill drones and toss them out of the hives. If beekeepers note a profuse amount of dead bees during this time, they should look closely and identify them. If the hive is in normal operating condition, these dead bees will be drones exclusively. Since they don’t have stingers and workers do, they are easy for the workers to kill.

Kavala was impressed. There were women out in the world that didn’t need mates. Bees were living proof. She chuckled a little. Too bad they couldn’t kill all the unwanted men in the world after they’d populated it.

[Kavala]

Kavala moved on. The next type of bee in the hive was a worker bee. Worker bees, Kavala had to chuckle, were all females. They were not the primary egg layer like the queen was. However, oddly enough they could lay eggs. If a hive lots its queen, after a long period of time something caused the workers to start laying eggs.

These eggs were unfertilized but would hatch out drones. Evidently it was easy to tell a worker bee’s egg verses a queen bees egg. Like she’d read before, the longer body of the queen allowed her to lay the egg at the very bottom or back of the cells. While the workers were shorter, they couldn’t reach so far back in. Their eggs, the drone eggs in the rare event they happened, were often far more than one egg per cell and were placed in the middle or about at the distance a worker bee could fit in.

The hive will die anyhow without a queen being born or a new one flying in because the worker females have no way to replace queens as they cannot lay queen eggs themselves. Beekeepers often face this issue and must replace their queens. There was a whole section in the book on replacing a queen in the hive. She skipped it though, wanting to go back to it after she’d taken in more knowledge about the bees and how they lived.

Back on the topic of the workers, Kavala read more about what they really did.

Worker bees will live in the hive working for about twenty one days at which point she grows a set of wings and is then able to begin foraging for nectar, water, pollen and propolis. Workers live longer in the winter when the bees are confined to the hives. But in the summer, when most of the hive activity is taking place, most worker bees will work themselves to death in about thirty days.

What a sad life, Kavala thought, being born only to work oneself to death. Sure the hive thrived, but did they really get any joy in life out of their life working towards the good of the whole? The male drones died. The females were either slave egg layers or workers. Queens lived upwards of two years to the worker’s mere thirty days. The Konti sighed, set the book aside and decided to take a break.

She went for a walk, looking about, and it was then she really began to notice the insect life in and around The Sanctuary. Bees were everywhere, though winter was fast approaching. Kavala wondered where their hives were and what they were actually going too and from in such a hurry. And she also wondered if it was possible to follow a bee on its foraging.

She’d definitely try that later, after she had more information. Refreshed, she grabbed a bite to eat and got back to her corner of the Commons where she had her equipment, the one hive, and her books and notes strewn out. It was a good thing the Commons had a bar separating it from the kitchen, otherwise she’d never would have had enough table space to do all the studying she was enjoying.

[Kavala]

Kavala was lucky the back of the book had a glossary of sorts. She had found a word in her reading – propolis – that she had no clue the meaning of. Carefully she skimmed the book, finally finding the glossary in the back where she found the definition carefully listed.

Propolis – a resin mixture that bees gather from biological sources such as tree buds or bark which is oozing sap and combine with their own secretions which is sometimes called ‘bee glue’. They use it for four major things – mainly as a sealant- and a whole host of smaller minor things. Propolis can be gathered from almost anywhere and can be of any color depending on its source. It tends to be sticky when warm, and hard and brittle when cool.

1. makes the structure of the hive stronger
2. dampens noise and reduces motion or vibration
3. increases defensibility because it is used to seal off any gaps or spaces other creatures, such as mites, can use to invade the hive.
4. keeps the hive clean because bees use it to ‘encase’ invaders that might make it into the hive and die (insects, rodents, etc). When thoroughly coated with propolis, any decaying matter such as flesh does not stink and cannot ‘leak’ to contaminate the food or water supplies of the bees.

So it seemed propolis had other benefits too. Much like honey, propolis could treat burns, heal up wounds, and was used a great deal in oral medicine such as packing the wounds left when a tooth was extracted. Propolis can also be used on fungal infections like athletes foot and toenail issues. Kavala was intrigued. She was fairly certain this was something known only to beekeepers because she’d never caught wind of it in her studies on Mura or within the Sea of Grass. Bee glue is easy to collect without much work. Beekeepers build attachments to their hives and bee boxes that the honeybees then feel the need to ‘seal’ with the bee glue. An industrious beekeeper then waits until the bees have the airy box all sealed up, and can scrape it clean of propolis, thus harvesting it neatly and without a great deal of effort.

In thinking about Propolis, Kavala got to thinking about the beeswax and the structure of the hive. She knew she needed to learn about the lifecycles of bees and of the hives themselves seasonally, but the structure of the honeycomb and how it was made also distracted her. The Konti felt like her mind was wide open and eager. She wanted to learn, wanted to get to the heart of the matter. She knew about the hives, but what about the combs?

First, there was no more distinct shape than a honeycomb. The term was hexagon, though Kavala didn’t know it as such until she read it in the book. Beekeepers had no knowledge of why bees picked hexagons, though some speculated that hexagons allowed the bees to fit the amount of structure they needed in a smaller space. The shape itself might have been chosen because it needed less material, less surface area, than other shapes. Bees had only so much time to do things, and they were minimalists if possible.

In her medical practice at The Sanctuary, Kavala would be needing the honeycomb as much as she would be needing the honey. Honeycomb was a primary source of beeswax, everyone knew that, and any sort of salve or cream she wanted to make required beeswax to be added to firm the concoction when she was filtering and making medicine. So besides the benefits of honey, Kavala would have access to beeswax and that was important. She knew she could store it for long periods of time, and use it as she needed it. So in caretaking for the bees, they would be in turn caretaking for her.

So, a hive basically has thousands of bees. The honeycomb is the basic structure of how the bees live. They laid their eggs in the hexagonal structures, incubating them, and sealing them in for protection until the young bees were ready to emerge. But honeycomb also stores water, and food, namely honey and pollen. The individual unites of the comb were called cells. So the honeycomb was in essence a storage unit comprised of cells But the wax of the honeycomb also provides an important infrastructure component to the hive, protecting the hives exterior from enemies and elements of Zulrav’s nature – wind, rain, snow.

Honeycombs are built by the worker bees. At between twelve and fifteen days old, these workers begin to secrete beeswax from their wax glands after eating honey. Honeycomb is made mostly of sugar so it tastes sweet. The bees use their mandibles and legs to shape the beeswax and place it as they need it. Often, this is in building the hexagonal cells for honeycomb.

Very good beekeepers often were able to remove the honey without disturbing the structure, so the bees had to do less work building their homes and could be freed up to gather and make more honey. But, again, that was a study for a different day. Now that she understood a bit more about the comb, Kavala was going to move on to structure and lifecycle, the next. Those were the next two sections of her book.

[Kavala]

Kavala probably should have started right out on the life cycles of bees and how the hive functioned seasonally, but she was more and more curious about the structure of bees and if indeed her gnosis would work on them. Luckily there was an anatomy section to the book and she was able to flip to a diagram and start studying the bee, its parts and what some of the forms and functions were.

For one things, bees were typical insects. They had no bones, not like people or say horses. Instead, their whole body structure was supported by an exoskeleton that they used to hold their whole body together. The exoskeleton was covered by fine hairs and according to her book, the bee could feel with the hairs much like a cat could feel with its whiskers. They also used these hairs to collect pollen because it cling to the hairs as the bee flew from flower to flower collecting nectar, pollen, and the materials for their bee glue.

They had round and flat heads, typical of most insects, that contained eyes that where huge and multifaceted called compound eyes. There were dots on top of their heads too, called Ocelli, which a konti with a gift for insects once reported was actually simple eyes designed for the low light in the hive. Kavala was skeptical, but some Konti gifts took on rare forms, and maybe this Konti in particular was the champion of beekeepers or something. Regardless it was interesting.

The rest of the head was made up of antennae, mouth parts, and a proboscis. Kavala knew what a proboscis was because when she was small she’d often watched butterflies dip their ‘tongues’ into nectar and drank. Her mother had called it a bee’s straw, like the hollow river reeds the healers among the Dryks sometimes used as needles. Some people thought the antennae were what honeybees had instead of noses. These thoughts were generated from observations, watching bees land and gently ‘touch’ things with the antennae and or waving them around once in the vicinity of something new or interesting to the bee.




Kavala also noted a diagram in the book that showed the difference between the three types of honeybees and what their head shape was like. She noted that the Ocelli on the Queen and the Workers were far larger than the ones on the Drones. And while the queen was bigger, the proboscis of the worker was larger, stronger, meaning the worker probably needed more strength to carry out their duties.

Other parts of a bee, the thorax for example, housed things that were fairly simple. Bees had four wings, for instance, one set attached to the front or fore and one attached to the aft or back of the bees thorax. The wings were interesting though. They were separate things when the bee was resting and they were folded down, but when the bee was flying the wings sort of hooked together allowing more airspace and higher longer flights. Kavala was sometimes impressed at how animals were put together. The bee was definitely one of those things that impressed her.

Moving on to the bee legs, Kavala also got a surprise. Legs were just not legs on bees. They functioned both as hands and legs, so each set of legs, and there were three of them, did something slightly different. The first set of legs, closet to its head, simply helped it stand up and cleaned its antennae. That was all. But the middle legs, they walked and were used to tuck packets of pollen or propolis into baskets located high on the hind legs. Hind legs, it seemed, had combs and a pollen press or basket that packs food, water, and a whole host of other things back to the hive.

There were also holes lining the thorax and abdomen of a honeybee that acted like its lungs, letting breath in and out of the solid rigid frame. Kavala thought that was interesting, they had no lungs per say, but they did indeed breathe.

So the head, much like in animals, contained the brain, sensory organs, and glands of all sorts. The thorax contained the main connector body of the bee and held the wings and leg attachments. The abdomen seemed to contain all the digestive and reproductive organs plus all the glands that secreted wax and scent. It also contained the stingers in the workers and queens.

Kavala studied the stinger on the diagram, and while she knew she never wanted to be stung, she had a sneaking suspicion that learning to beekeeper was inviting a whole host of them into her life.

Continued in[The Sanctuary] All Things Wise and Wonderful

[Shadow Cast]

Thread Rewards!

Kavala:

XP- Beekeeping 5

Lore- Bees: Only Able to Sting Once; Bees: Dormant in the Winter; Bees: Queens Populate the Entire Hive; Check on Queen Bees Every Two Weeks; Bees: Drones Mate with the Queen Bee; Bees: Drones are Expelled from the Hive Every Fall and Winter; Bees: Drones do not have Stingers; Bees: Workers are Females and can only Lay Drone Eggs; Bees: In the Summer Worker Bees Work Themselves to Death in Thirty Days; Propolis is a Type if Bee Glue Used as a Sealant; Propolis can be used to Heal Wounds; Hives: Hexagonal Structures Hold Eggs, Food and Water; Bees: Hair on the Exoskeleton is used to Feel and Gather Pollen

Comments: I feel like I'm taking a beekeeping class! Which I expect is exactly what you wanted. Keep up the good work!

Happy Threading!
-Shadow