Bees, Wasps and Figs

Apart from their importance as specialist pollinators - without which 90% of our food crops wouldn't exist, as Rudolf Steiner said in his lectures on bees given in 1923 "it is truly something to marvel at how the bee sucks the honey nectar commonly available in nature, transforms it within itself, and produces honey, which is so extraordinarily useful for human life". Steiner talks about how the same process, albeit in a different and less developed form, is found in wasps, although we can't get anything similar from the wasp that can be beneficial to humankind. Steiner describes the gall wasp, who deposits her egg on an oak leaf, causing the entire leaf tissue to undergo a complete transformation. Around the wasp egg, , sticking out of the leaf, a gall is formed. The wasp, by placing its egg in the leaf, takes the substance that it needs from the plant at the time, and transforms it. Steiner goes on to describe how this process in wasps is used in Greece to sweeten wild figs, where the wild fig tree is very attractive to a certain type of wasp, which places its egg into the fig. The fig grower takes figs from the wild fig tree, and hangs them in his fig trees on which the figs need to be improved. The wasp eggs and larvae in the wild fig speed up their development, due to sensing that the wild figs are drying out, out and emerge as adults from the wild figs, and as a result of their early emergence are forced into creating a second brood, ths time laying eggs in the cultivated figs. These eggs don't achieve maturity, but the figs become twice as sweet and are enriched and improved. Steiner compares this to the honey making of bees - the wasp gives the figs added sweetness. A wasp is unable to produce honey the same way that a bee does, but it can transfer, during its reproductive cycle, the sweetness of honey to the fig. Steiner says "using natural processes, they can make possible a certain type of honey creation invlving the transfer of something from one fig to another. The bee is a creature that has developed its wasp like body to such an extent that it can carry on independently, away from the tree, the process that the wasp can only carry on within the tree itself."
Steiner, of course was writing a long time ago, and before the process of pollination was really understood. It is interesting to note that in all his lectures on the improtance of bees, their role as pollinators is not mentioned, yet that role is now known to be of prime importance to our planet and our survival. It was known by the fig growers that the wasps gave sometihing to the fig trees that improved the figs and allowed them to develop into ripe, sweet fruit, but it was not known exactly how the process worked. We now know that the wasp sweetens the fig throug the process of pollination. The Caprii fig, is a wild fig that grows in the Mediterranean region and Western Asia. It has no commercial value itself, but cultivation is essential to the development of the Symrna Fig. The Capri Fig produces three crops of figs a year. Figs are unusual in theat the flowers are produced inside the fruit, and a specially adapted wasp, the Blastophagena psenes crawls inside the fig to the flowers. The spring crop (called the profici crop)of figs contain staminate flowers and "gall flowers", which are similar to pistillate flowers, but have shor ovaries. The fig wasp enters the young figs and lays eggs in the gall flowers. After about two months, the next generation of wasps emerges, becoming covered in pollen in the process, and enters the sumer crop of figs, which contain mainly gall flowers. As the wasp enters the figs it fertilise the gall flowers with pollen. The wasp will lay eggs in some of the gall flowers, but not all - those with eggs will not grow fertile seeds due to the presence of the wasp larvae, but those that don't contain larvae will. Later in the aseason the winter crop of fruit develops and the wasps over-winter in the fruit. The cultivated Smyrna Fig produces no staminate flowers, and is therefore entirely dependent on cross pollination from the Capri figs. Branches of figs, containing wasp larvae and eggs, from the profici crop are suspended on the Smyrna fig trees by the grower. The emerging wasps enter the partly developed Smyrna figs and pollinate them, but are unable to deposit eggs in the correct location i the flowers, as they are a different shape to the flowers of the Capri figs, with longer stamens. The wasps then emerge from the fig, and will pollinate several figs looking for somewhere to deposit eggs. Smyrna figs have a better flavour and sweetness once fertile the seeds develop. Thus, like the bee, the wasp is an important pollinator and indirectly, produces a sweet substance by allowing the fertilised fig to develop.
Different insects are adapted to pollinate different types of plant, and the little fig wasp can get into places where bees can't - everything has its place in the balance of nature - but bees are the major type of pollinator in the ecosytem. Different species of bees too, are adapted to pollinate and suck nectar from different types of plant. It is important thererfore that all types of bees are protected, and helped to survive and proliferate, not just the ones that give us honey. And even the much maligned and hate wasp needs to be treated with some respect, as it is also has a role as a pollinator, and predator of garden pests.

The Wasp and the Bee - a Fable reprinted from Evenings at Home

A wasp met a bee, and said to her, "Pray, tell me what is the reason that men are so illnatured to me, while they are so fond of you? We are both very much alike, only that the broad, golden rings about my body make me much handsomer than you are: we are both winged insects, we both love honey, and we both sting people when we are angry; yet men always hate me, and try to kill me, though I am much more familiar with them than you are, and pay them visits in their houses, and at their tea table, and at all their meals: while you are very shy, and hardly ever come near them: yet they build you curious houses, thatched with straw, and take care of, and feed you i the winter very often: - I wonder, what is the reason?"
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The bee said "Its because you never do them any good, but, on the contrary, are very troublesome and mischievous; therfore they do not like to see you. But they know that I am busy all day long in making them honey. You had better pay them fewer visits, and try to be useful!