Commusings: Sweet Math

Dear Commune Community,

I’m preparing to write this Commusing by mixing a batch of iced peppermint tea with honey, a favorite creative tonic of mine.

I crack open a gallon jar of honey from Eli, our local beekeeper, and as I measure out a mesmerizingly drippy teaspoon, I realize I no longer need this inspirational libation. My sweet muse is right here. Because when you fully understand what goes into making 1 teaspoon of honey, you cannot help but feel a sense of awe and wonder for the natural world.

We begin with a lone forager bee flying from the hive in search of nectar. We’ll call her Phoebee (after my eldest teenage daughter). All forager bees are non-reproductive females (hopefully like my daughter — at least for now ;-).  Bees will venture out as much as five miles to find forage, but generally prefer to linger a mile or less from the hive.

Phoebee happens to find a particularly luscious shrub of azaleas about a mile down the way. She uses her long, tube-like tongue to sip nectar into a special organ called the “honey stomach” or “crop,” separate from her digestive stomach.

Another mile flight home and Phoebee returns to the hive, where she regurgitates the nectar into the mouth of a house bee, who chews the nectar for about thirty minutes. During this time, enzymes in the bee’s saliva break the complex sugars in the nectar into simpler sugars.

House bees then fill the hive’s honeycomb with the processed nectar and fan their wings over the cells to evaporate most of the water content, thickening the nectar into honey. Finally, the bees seal the honeycomb cell with a wax cap. This wax comes from special glands on their abdomens and is used to protect the honey from air and moisture, keeping it fresh until needed by the colony (or until it is pilfered by a beekeeper).

To summarize: Flower nectar + bee spit + dehydration = honey. So far straightforward, if still strangely miraculous. But now consider this math: 

A bee can store about 70 milligrams of nectar in its honey stomach.

Nectar is 70%-80% water and, on average, nectar reduces to about one-fifth of its original weight when converted to honey.

Therefore, 70 milligrams of nectar yields approximately 14 milligrams of honey.

One teaspoon of honey typically weighs about 7,000 milligrams (or seven grams). 

In our example, the flower source is a mile away, or a two-mile round trip.

7,000 milligrams divided by 14 milligrams per trip = 500 trips times 2 miles per trip = 1,000 miles!

The lone teaspoon of honey I am currently stirring into my tea thus represents a thousand miles of bee flight, not to mention all the effort spent chewing, fanning, and capping the honey. 

In comparison, my goal of 10,000 steps a day suddenly seems rather trivial.

And lest you are not yet fully awed by the diligent intelligence of nature, Phoebee would not have made all those trips alone.

When a forager bee finds a good source of nectar, it returns to the hive and performs a “waggle dance” to inform other bees.

This dance involves a series of movements in a figure-eight pattern. The direction of the straight run part of the dance in relation to the sun tells the other bees the direction to fly. For example, if the bee waggles straight up the hive, it means the food source is in the direction of the sun. If the bee waggles at an angle, the other bees will fly at that angle relative to the sun. Here’s a diagram to help visualize this:

The duration of the waggle part of the dance indicates the distance to the food source (about 1 second per kilometer). The longer the waggle, the further the distance.

It’s not exactly Google Maps, but it has worked for the last few million years. As if that’s not enough, though, bees then use a form of collective decision-making, or “voting” to choose which nectar source to pursue as a hive.

When multiple forager bees return to the hive after finding different nectar sources, each performs a waggle dance to advertise its find. The vigor and duration of a bee's dance communicates the quality and distance to the nectar source. Other bees observe these dances and, based on the enthusiasm of the dancers, decide which source to investigate.

If they find the source as good as advertised, they return and perform their own waggle dance, reinforcing the original message. Over time, this process leads to a consensus as more and more bees are attracted to the best source.

Maybe I’ll try this the next time my family is deciding on a restaurant.

So to summarize the miraculous origins of my now fully dissolved teaspoon of honey:

Phoebee discovered a promising source of nectar, went back to the hive, and danced about it.

Other bees ventured out, found it as good as advertised and added their dance to hers.

Eventually, thousands of bees traveled about 1,000 miles to gather enough nectar to make my one teaspoon of honey.

And here I have already finished my cup of tea in 10 minutes. That’s some sweet math.

In love, include me,
Jeff

P.S. If you want to try some of Eli’s honey, come to a Commune retreat! We have more spaces available in our next Balance retreat on August 2-4, or explore our full Summer/Fall retreat schedule here.