Honey Bees

A colony of bees consists of a queen, worker bees, drones, and various stages of brood (immature bees) living together as a social unit. There are between 10,000 and 50,000 bees in a colony. The brood nest isspherical in shape, increasingly filling more cells in each comb and covering more combs as it expands in size. Partially digested pollen, called bee bread, is stored adjacent to cells containing brood. Honey or nectar is stored around the outer edges of, and above, the brood nest. A honey bee egg looks like a tinygrain of white rice standing on end, centered at the base of a cell. To facilitate seeing eggs and other larval stages, shake or gently brush the bees off the comb (use a bee brush) and stand with your back to the sun. Tilt the comb so that the light shines directly into the cells. With a little experience it is not difficult to recognize larval bees or to distinguish capped brood (pupae) from capped honey (ripened honey covered by a thin layer of wax.

The queen bee

Each colony normally has only one queen which is the only bee in the colony capable of fertilizing the eggs she lays. The queen bee develops from a fertilized egg that hatches 3 days after being laid. Nurse bees, a class of worker bee, feed developing queen larvae a special diet consisting mostly of the royal jelly that they secrete from their glands. This special diet shortens the time spent to reach maturity to 16 days, compared with 21days for the worker bee and 24 for the drone. The result is a bee larger than any others, with fully developed ovaries and a very large abdomen. The queen lacks the specialized body parts of worker bees that help them accomplish their tasks. The queen's task is to produce bees and the constant diet of royal jelly fed to an adult queen supplies the nutrients necessary for development of the large ovaries that swell the abdomen. The queen is reared in a large cell resembling a peanut shell that hangs vertically from the comb and about 10 days after emerging she becomes sexually mature. The virgin queen takes one or more brief mating flights during which she mates with 10 to 20 drones to ensure complete filling of the spermatheca. Large amounts of sperm are necessary, since the queen will be laying more than 1,000 eggs a day for many months and will never mate again. The queen begins laying eggs shortly after mating. Even though the queen has a larger thorax, longer abdomen, and less hair than the workers, she can be very difficult to find in a populous colony. Clipping and marking the queen is worth much more than the few cents it costs when she has to be located in the colony. To ensure the potential for having a populous and productive colony, beekeepers should requeen their colonies annually with young vigorous queens

The worker bee

All the rest of the bees in the colony are workers. The worker bee develops from a fertilized egg that hatches 3 days after it is laid. Nurse bees feed the developing larva royal jelly, honey, and pollen during the next 5 to 6 days, then cap the cell. Each larva spins a cocoon and changes to a prepupa, then a pupa. The pupa is not physically active, but undergoes extensive chemical and structural changes that convert it into a functioning adult. (Adult workers are always female.) On the 21st day after the egg has been laid, the adult chews through her wax cap and emerges from the cell to groom herself and to start eating honey and pollen. Her exoskeleton hardens and she is ready to begin her many chores. The workers, endowed with specialized body parts to accomplish their tasks, supply all the labor of the colony. Young worker bees clean cells, feed larvae (through food glands in the workers' heads), remove debris from the hive, evaporate water from nectar to produce honey, secrete wax (through wax glands in their abdomens), build the comb, guard the colony (by means of their inbuilt chemical alarm system), and ventilate the hive. When they are about 3 weeks old, worker bees begin to forage for water and nectar, carrying their finds in a honey sac. Worker bees live only 6 weeks or so during periods of active brood rearing and foraging, but they can survive for several months over winter.

The drone bee

At their peak population (early summer), drones rarely exceed 600 per colony. Their sole function, as male bees, is to mate with the queen. When virgin queens are no longer being produced (in the fall), the drones are forced out of the colony to die of starvation, and no drones are reared until the following spring. Drones develop from unfertilized eggs that hatch 3 days after they are laid. Nurse bees feed the developing larvae royal jelly, honey, and pollen over a 7-day period; the cells are then covered with air-permeablewax (capped).A drone pupa is longer than a worker pupa; thus, its capping is raised above the surface of the comb. This is especially apparent if the drone is reared in a worker cell, where the capping rises way above the capped worker brood and sometimes is referred to as a "bullet." The drone emerges 24 days after the egg is laid and spends the next 10 days maturing sexually and learning to fly. A drone must be fed by worker bees from the time he emerges until the day he dies of oldage (about 5 weeks after emerging) or immediately after mating with a virgin queen. The drone can be distinguished from the workers by its large size, blocky shape, and very large eyes which cover most of his head. He makes more noise when flying thandoes the worker, but he is harmless because he has no sting.