I've been watching through footage (and making notes of relevant quotes and their accompanying time stamps) and our interview with Immanuel Onega, who is a huge honey exporter piqued my interest. He was talking a great deal about honey bees, and I realized I know very little about them so I looked them up on Wikipedia. They are amazing little creatures. The best thing (in my opinion) is the queen bee. Her life actually sounds pretty excruciating. She lays her own bodyweight in eggs every few hours! HOURS! Imagine giving birth to eight babies every four hours. Not a job I'd want. She is constantly surrounded by little worker bees who feed her and carry off her waste-its tough for her to move because she is so filled with eggs! She also produces a chemical substance that the worker bees pass through the hive to keep the other bees from producing any eggs of their own. Amazing. I'm glad our social system isn't the same, but bees do a great deal of important work in terms of fertilizing plants and so forth. That's why "colony collapse disorder" is so alarming. I hope scientists can sort this out, because the moral of the story is we need bees! (for a lot more than just honey).
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