THE BEAUTY OF BEES
Imagine: A multitude of workers that bring you food day and night, soldiers to protect your stronghold, midwives to raise the children and feed them, and no-one ever goes on strike or asks for an increase. All you have to do is to lay 2 000 eggs every day for two to five years, after mating only once in your life.
This is the life of a queen bee. And if she and her fellow queens don’t survive and the bee colonies die out, a food crisis stares humanity in the face.
People don’t always realise how dependent we are on the contribution that bees make to our biodiversity, says Sharon Lage of MacBee Honey in Gauteng. She is a commercial bee farmer and has about 500 hives all around the Highveld. Bees are her passion – she can talk about them for