Common misconceptions: Only bees make honey, wasps don't!
I've posted about bee's, hornets and bumblebees already before, but this post is to attend to suesas science challenge!
It is commonly known that bees are our main source of honey, as there are species of bees which live in big communities and produce grand amounts of honey. This is not useful for us only because of the honey, but bees are pollinators which are needed in berry farms and such to pollinate the berries (or apples etc.)
Most known wasps however are predators, which are focused on killing and eating other insects. They may collect nectar, but their main source of nutrition are other bugs and they do not produce honey to be collected. However there are wasps which produce honey!
This is known by quite few, as typically people are making difference between bees and wasps by saying "Bees make honey, wasps are predators".
Species Brachygastra mellifica - Mexican Honey Wasp
Mexican Honey Wasps is a species of wasps which work actively in pollinating plants and creating honey. They are highly social, living in large colonies (even with more than one queen in hives) and highly effective pollinators even compared to honey bees!
Mexican Honey Wasps effectivity in pollinating is as they have some hair in their body, as quite many other wasps have almost or completely hairless bodies. This may also cause some confusion with people, as they might not recognize Mexican honey wasps as wasps.
By Alex Wild/Insects Unlocked [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons
Sources to read more:
Bees are one of the most important insects on the planet, Albert Einstein once said that if the population of bees died out the human population would follow in about seven years, cheers mike
Bees are really important, but people should be woken up into importance of other insects, like butterflies as pollinators.
It's not only about one species but all of them.
That's a fair comment
Nice to hear, friend.
Thank you very much appreciated. Cheers
Hey, to be honest I didn't know that. I never read much in this area nor I have wondered about it, but it's nice to read some interesting facts here on Steemit. That's why I love this website :)
I had learned it only a while ago too, it seems that this is not too common knowledge around the world. I'm happy to help people learn something new :)
Worker bees also don't produce honey i guess?
If I'm not completely wrong, worker bees are not a species of bees but kind of type of bees in every species. Like queen bee, worker bees etc.
So I wouldn't be surprised if worker bees would produce honey :)
Okk thanks @apsu for sharing the knowledge ... Steemon!!
I'm happy to help
hey, check me out too! XD
well i guess animals are mysterius and much to research about, always new things to learn about them that people are unaware of or even think impossible.
Well you are right, we can't even pretend to know everything about animals. I hope people would show interest to learn more.
Wow, this was absolutely new to me. Especially the fact, that they use hair on their bodies to collect the pollen is fascinating. 👍🏼
While reading material for this post, I read about how many different wasps can visit plant flowers but they don't pollinate them as effectively, as they have hairless bodies. They will only get the nectar (or whatever they are after) and will not help spread the love between plants.
Thank you for the comment :)
That's something new. I love this challenges.
Nice to year, the best thing is that we all can learn something new :)
Indeed.