In my previous post, we looked at the history of bee-keeping and beehive design. Today our focus will be on the colony itself and how it operates. Each hive will have worker bees, usually one queen bee and drones, each social group design differing and directly related to its function within the colony.
The DRONES are sexually developed males and each hive will have around several hundred of them on board. When the queen is ready to mate, drones can identify her location by sensing special chemicals, or pheromones, which she emits. Drones die after mating in the air as they have fulfilled their function in the hive which has no further use for them.
A few larvae are fed royal jelly which helps produce a larger bee more quickly. The first virgin QUEEN to emerge from the cell will eat honey, groom herself and then search for rival queens in the hive. Should there be others, they will fight to the death to decide who reigns in the colony. Once the victor is about one week old, she will fly at a distance from the hive, attract the drones to mate with her then, alone, she returns to the hive as the new queen mother. She is now especially well looked after by nurse bees and within three to four days she starts laying her eggs - usually in early summer.
Her main roles are to produce the eggs and she can lay up to 1,500 egg each day at peak time - that number depends on the amount of food that is made available to her. Since she does not forage as do the worker bees, her design lacks some of the components they require to carry out their duties. Her other responsibility is to maintain unity within the colony by virtue of her specific identity and her production of queen substance, the mandibular pheromone which she feeds to her nurses and who in turn share with the rest of the colony. This secretion helps drones identify an unmated queen as well as inhibits worker bees from developing ovaries and from rearing new queens. Her usual life span is about two to three years. As her capabilities decline, worker bees will begin feeding larvae, one of which will be reared to take over her role
There will be several thousand WORKER BEES in each hive and their life span is generally only between 5-6 weeks, but over winter can survive for 4-6 months, thereby ensuring the continuity of the colony for the next season, as they keep both the brood and the queen warm and fed in the cold weather. The workers are sexually undeveloped females since, as fertilized eggs, they have been fed more of a honey and pollen mix and less royal jelly than those destined to be queens. Worker bees are the smallest in size but more complex in design, which reflects the diversity of duties they may have to perform.
Their main duties are to:
- Gather pollen and nectar
- Make wax, build honeycomb and produce honey
- Clean and defend the hive and regulate the inside temperature
- Care for the brood and the queen bee.
Their duties are dependent on their age and the needs of the colony. Only in the last few weeks of their lives do worker bees go outside the hive.
Their foraging outside is what produces the bees’ food store. They collect nectar, which is the excess plant sugar found at the base of flowers. They store nectar in their stomachs till they return to the hive; during this trip an enzyme in their stomach turns this sugar into diluted honey. This they deposit in the comb cells which other worker bees will fan with their wings until the excess water evaporates, leaving pure honey, their carbohydrate food store.
But worker bees are not purely honey
harvesters. To ensure theirs is a
balanced diet, bees also collect pollen
which contains both healthy fats and proteins. Pollen is the powder produced by
the male part of the plant. Since plants cannot fertlise themselves, the bee helps
perform this task by scattering pollen onto the female plant parts during the
collection process.
Bees also produce propolis which has as its base a resinous substance they collect from tree buds. When this is mixed with their saliva and beeswax it produces a sticky substance which they use as glue. With this they seal cracks in the hive as well as reduce the entrance size to keep out the cold in winter months. Propolis is said to have anti-bacterial properties and has been found to help wounds heal.
In order to create worker bees and queens, one final substance is required: royal jelly. Bees working as nurse bees eat fermented pollen and add gland secretions to produce it. This is fed to the larvae at critical times and determines how their development will proceed.
Above we see how the worker bees tend and help to produce a healthy brood. Next time we call someone ‘a busy bee’, perhaps we can appreciate more fully the full semantic import of the metaphor!
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