Producer vs. Consumer

honey bee.bmpihohoi.bmpTim the Honey Bee
By: Karl Herrera
Alyssa Reyes
Andrea Azzalin
Tracy Sanchez

Once upon a time there was a little bee named Tim. Tim loved honey but before he could shove his face in it and bathe in its richness (Tim was an odd bee…) there was a long process with a lot of different things that had to be done before it could get its honey. Tim was desperate for honey so he went out to find a flower.
See the flower produces nectar which a bee goes to collect. Tim would be the consumer because he is carrying off the product that the flower is making. That is one example of how the bees practice consumer-producer survival.
Tim was very excited that he had finally collected the nectar so he took it home to enjoy. Eager as he was he sat down in front of his mom at the kitchen table and greedily started to eat. His mom started to laugh.
“Baby, is that the nectar from the flowers?” she asked. Tim made a sour face and nodded. “Don’t you know that before you can have honey first the nectar has to go through certain changes and in order to be honey?” she seemed to be ridiculing him a bit more than telling him what he was doing was wrong.
“Baby when a flower produces nectar the bees from our hive go and collect it. But there are other processes it has to go through before it can be ready to be eaten.”
Tim felt so ignorant. His only response was a single “oh”
Not knowing what to do after that he walked back into the center of the hive sadly carrying his nectar.
“Wow! Where’d you get that clean nectar from?” asked one of the bees that saw Tim floating away.
”oh, well one of the flowers outside…” More bees started to gather and look with amazement at the nectar that Tim had collected. Somehow he was still lost to why everyone was making such a big deal out of everything.
But then Arnold Bigname approached. Arnold Bigname was the bee that everyone wanted to be. He was popular, had the latest in bee-technology and was great with females. He also had a really important job in the hive. He told all the bees where to travel to and from what flowers to take the nectar.
“Where did you find that succulent nectar?” asked Arnold.
“Well uh… it was kinda… there was this flower…. And well inside the flower… well…”
“Pish posh, none of that matters. Can you take us back to the flowers?”
Tim was surprised to even hear that Arnold used words like “pish posh” hesitating a bit, “uhh, yeah,” slowly came out of his mouth.
After that Tim started to be seen as higher, very role modelish. But he also got to do something that the greedy little bee always wanted to, try all the honey first, but always watching closely the process that it occurred. The flowers produced nectar that the bees went to collect, acting as consumers. The bees took the nectar back to the hive where they produce honey where bees take for themselves and their small bees. And very often the bees would get giant visitors. These strange creatures were called humans. The humans at times would also serve as consumers as they only came to take the honey. That was how Tim learned there was a cycle and how producers were important before they could be consumers.