Honey bees and bee products are also valuable bioindicators of pollutants, such as airborne particulate matter, heavy metals, and pesticides the honey bee is therefore well known an insect at the interface between human and ecosystem health.
Exactly how long honey has been in existence is not well understood but the earliest record of keeping bees in hives was found in the sun temple erected in 2400BC near Cairo, bees featured frequently in Egyptian hieroglyphs and, being favoured by the pharaohs, often symbolised royalty. The ancient Egyptians used honey as a sweetener, as a gift to their gods and even as an ingredient in embalming fluid.
Honey bees feed on floral nectar and pollen that they store in their colonies as honey and bee bread. Social division of labour enables the collection of stores of food that are consumed by within-hive bees that convert stored pollen and honey into royal jelly. Royal jelly and other glandular secretions are the primary food of growing larvae and of the queen but are also fed to other colony members. The queen lays eggs whilst the workers care for the young, every year a new queen will either take the place of her mother, or she will leave to start a colony of her own.
Bees feed on nectar and pollen and need a continuous supply during the main part of the year if they are to thrive, gardens and greenspaces are therefore key, gardens are estimate to occupy more than 400,000 hectares (approx. 900,000 acres). Many are small but, all planted with nectar - and pollen-rich flowers they can make a huge impact. Honeybees and wild pollinators need both abundant and diverse sources of nectar and pollen, to provide sufficient, high-quality food. Much research has been performed into which plants are the most important sources so that honeybees and wild pollinators can thrive, particular species include trees: Hawthorn, Cotoneaster, Sycamore and Maple, fruiting trees: Apple, Cherries and Plums, other key sources include Brambles, White Clover, Heather, Borage, Dandelions and Brassicas, and even invasive plant species Himalayan Balsam. More widely landscape level changes are required to provide more floral resources, hedgerows, bramble margins, grasslands and wildflowers meadows. The conservation of remaining species-rich meadows or ‘improved grasslands’ are also a priority.
You can help the bees by planting more flowers and bulbs to as a food source, it doesn't matter if your garden is a balcony, allotment, window box, pots and tubs or a swathe of green open space, choosing plants with single, open flowers for easy access to the pollen and nectar. Planting spring bulbs is great way to help bees in spring, planting of spring-flowering bulbs this autumn such as Snowdrops, native Bluebells, crocus and late-spring flowering fritillaries, by combining bulbs, you will help attract different pollinators, too.