The following are excerpts from a book donated by the Arakura Playcentre to a recent Lions Book Fair, and rescued by Me! The book is called "All Kinds of Bees" and is by D Shuttlesworth and S Swain, published in New York in 1967. Because of the period of time elapsed since publication, there are quite possibly considerable advances in our ‘bee’ knowledge:

Bees may be divided into two groups – the social bees, such as the honeybees, and the solitary bees, such as the carpenter bees. Then there are family groups and divisions within the families. Another way of grouping bees is by the length and shape of the tongue. The first type of tongue is short and pointed. The second is short and forked. The third is long and ribbonlike. The size and shape of the tongue influences the kinds of flower a bee visits to obtain nectar.

Honeybees: Because they depend on flowers, a keen sense of smell is important to bees. The fragrance of a flower helps guide them to nectar. They can also detect by smell whether another whether another bee approaching the hive belongs there or to another colony. But a bee does not have a nose. Its openings for breathing are on its body, not on its head. They play no part in detecting smells. A bee "smells" with its antennae, or feelers. Nerve fibres connect the sensitive feelers with the brain. They tell the bee what lies near. When a bee touches something with her feelers, she receives still more information. She can feel the shape of the object. A bee whose antennae have been injured or lost is quite helpless.

Apparently bees are not able to hear. No type of ear has ever been discovered on them, and they do not react to sound in any way. Of course, if someone knocks against a hive, the bees are disturbed. But this is because they feel their home being shaken, not because they hear anything.

Bumblebees: The name comes from the humming sound they make in flight. They are energetic hard-working creatures which visit flowers in search of nectar and pollen, and make wax and honey in much the way honeybees do.

Many bumblebees are quite large – in fact the size of a bumblebee’s body is so great compared with its wingspread that, according to the natural laws of flight, bumblebees should not be able to fly – an anonymous poet once wrote:

There are two important differences between the living habits of bumblebees and honeybees. Bumblebees do not make their nests in trees as honeybees do. They nest in the ground or on it. A second difference between the two kinds of bee is the length of the colony’s life. In regions where winters are cold, a bumblebee colony dies out at the end of autumn. Only a young queen survives. Spring warmth brings a young bumblebee queen out from her winter resting place. There is no mating flight, for she has already mated with a drone before the winter began. She basks for a while in the sunshine, and looks for food in the newly opened flowers. During the night she seeks shelter, perhaps in the ground or under old leaves. If there is an unseasonable chill, she remains hidden there during the day as well.

After a few weeks the queen is ready to start a new colony. First she must find a site. She makes a careful search of her territory, flying low over the ground. From time to time she lands to take a closer look. Her choice is not made hurriedly – she may spend days, even weeks, looking.

Once the queen has found her nest, she makes a tunnel into its centre, then burrows out a round chamber. When this is about an inch across, the moves in, keeping the finest of the nesting material close about her. Now and then she crawls outside to find food. She also brings back nectar which she deposits in the nesting material. Before long she begins to produce wax, which she uses to build an egg cell. When it is ready, she goes foraging again, but now she is searching for pollen. She thrusts this into her egg cell, smooths it carefully, then goes to collect more. By the time the cell is well stocked, she is ready to lay her first batch of eggs – usually between 8 and 14. Then she covers the cell with wax and is ready for a new task – the construction of a honeypot. This is finished in a day or two, and is used to store a supply of honey so that when the weather is bad the queen can stay inside her nest. Bumblebees’ honey is like that of the honeybees because it is made from nectar. However, bumblebees do not convert the sugar in the same way as honeybees, and the result is not so tasty.

When the tiny bumblebee eggs hatch, the maggot-like larvae start to feed on their bed of pollen. Their mother brings them fresh pollen and honey and feeds them through a break in the wall of each cell. Later she seals the break. The larvae grow quickly and each spins a cocoon of silk around itself. Until they emerge as adult bees, they need no more to eat. The wax which had covered the larvae does not go to waste, as the queen uses it to make more egg cells. At this stage she is collecting nectar and pollen, building, and incubating her brood with the heat of her body. As the young bees prepare to leave their cocoons, she often helps them to cut through their wrappings.

The first young bees to emerge are all workers. In a few days they are ready to help their mother. But although her colony is now well started, she does not become merely an egg laying machine as honeybee queens do. She continues to feed new broods and carry on other tasks throughout her life. Bumblebees feed their larvae only honey and pollen. They do not make the bee-bread used by honeybees.

Once a colony is well established with numerous workers, the males and queens are hatched. The young queens help with the chores; the male drones do nothing but eat (funny, sounds familiar ... Ed) Many drones leave the nest quite soon. They forage for their own food and lead independent lives. But before the summer is over they mate with the queens – either from their own colony or another.

As summer progresses, the queen lays fewer and fewer eggs until she stops. Then the workers, the old queen, and the drones die. But young queens, hunting snug retreats in which to spend the winter, give promise of new colonies to come.

Stingless Bees (sound like my kind of bee ... Ed) live in the warmer parts of the world – in South America and Mexico and in some areas on the other side of the world. There are several hundred species. All of them are small compared with honeybees. The smallest measures about 1/12 of an inch; the largest is less than 3/8" of an inch.

Tiny as they are, the stingless bees are great workers. Members of a colony produce honey and wax, and they build remarkable nests. Some of them spend much time collecting clay, which they build into barricades around the nest as a protection against possible enemies. They are masons as well as pollen gatherers and workers in wax.

Different kinds of stingless bees make different kinds of homes, though they follow one general plan. The nest is divided into two chambers – one for the brood, the other for storing honey and pollen. The horizontal combs of wax are supported one above the other by tiny pillars while between the combs are occasional gaps through which nurse bees can pass as they take care of the young. Some Australian stingless bees make their combs in the shape of an irregular spiral staircase. Each comb, encased in wax, winds upward, tapering toward the end. Some stingless bees make no regular combs, they simply heap their cells in clusters.

A colony of stingless bees is made up of three types of members – queen, workers and rones, but the drones seem to take an active part in domestic life and help to clean the nest and raise the young bees. The nests house enormous numbers of bees. They also hold large amounts of honey. The largest nests of the Australian stingless bee have been known to yield as much as fifty pounds about twice a year. In South America the Indians of the Amazon Valley can take as much as two quarts from a nest of average size. In Mexico the Maya Indians began to domestic stingless bees hundreds of years ago, housing the bees in hollow logs. However, these insects do not always choose flowers from which to collect food. Some may feed on the remains of dead animals and other refuse. As a result their honey can be poisonous to humans.

Although these bees are called "stingless" this is not strictly correct. They still have the remains of stinging equipment. When they attack an enemy they go through the motions of stinging, but their weapon no longer works. (definitely my kind of bee ... Ed)

They are far from defenceless however, Their bite is quite ferocious, and when a number of them set upon a victim, they can inflict real pain. The smallest of them can cause even more misery than the larger varieties by crawling into a person’s ears, nostrils, hair and eyes. In Brazil a common name for very tiny stingless bees is "eye lickers". (um, maybe on second thoughts ... )