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1. The History of
BeeKeeping
2. Anatomy of a Bee
3. The Brood Rearing Process
4. Queen, Worker & Drones Behavior
5. Races of Bees
6. Nectar and Pollen Plants of Pacific Northwest
7. Beekeeping Equipment & Hive Assembly
8. Selecting the apiary site
9. Packaged Bees and how to care for them
10. How to Manage Bees
11. Swarming, causes and control
12. How to hive a swarm
13. Removing and Extracting the Honey Crop
14. Wintering the Hive
15. Colony treatment for bee disease & mite control
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LESSON 4:
Queen, Worker and Drones Behavior
Through the centuries man has tried to solve the mysteries of the hive. Only now are we begininning to lift the veil of mystery from the life of the bee's.
What we are mainly concerned about is coming to a basic understanding of what actually is happening in the hive. There is the division of labor in the hive according to the caste's of bee's. The queen lays the eggs, worker do all the work and drones serve for fertilization of the virgin queen.
Understanding each individual bee's role in the hive will help us understand how to manage a hive more efficiently. For the most part we will focus on the worker bee as it does most of the work. The queen and drones are there to mainly just reproduce.
The working phase of worker bee's in time sequence
1. Cell cleaning - from 1-25 days
2. Feeding larvae - from 7-30 days
3. Building activities including cappings - 1-32 days
Various Activities
Age does exert a strong influence on the division of labor for the individual bee, but the determining factor seems to be the need of the colony as a whole. A normal colony consists of bees of all ages, and there is a certain general sequence of work which the bees perform. However, this division of labor is very flexible, constantly changing according to the conditions inside and outside the hive.
- Comb Building
In summer a worker spends half of her life as a hive bee and the other half as a fielder. Beeswax is the material used by honey bees in the construction of their combs. It is the product of their own bodies secreted through a gland on the bottom of their abdomen. The wax gland on the worker bee are at the height of their development and productivity when the bee is about 12-18 days old. Wax can be secreted only at relatively high temperatures and after the consumption of large amounts of honey or nectar. Workers actively engaged in secreting wax will gorge themselves on honey and hang near the site of building operations. Wax scales are removed by the bee using her legs and mandibles that are fixed to the comb. The mandible glands secret a juice a juice used in masticating the scales to cell structure.
- Nursing
Young bees normally take up the work of nursing at the age of 3 days. Nurse bees begin to make visits to the cell as soon as the egg is layed and continues.
- Food Transmission
In a colony of bees, food is passed from one worker to another and also from worker to the queen and drones. Both the begging and offering are innate reactions and improve in precision with age. Food transmission is important for the cohesion of a colony. It may serve as a form of communication, by informing each other of the amount of food and water available. Bees also need two types of food and they are seldom found in so clearly separated form as in the two substances which make up all the food collected and brought home to the colony by the foraging bee. One is nectar rich in sugar, but mostly free of protein and the other is pollen that is very rich in protein.
- Guard Duty
The hive entrance is a portal through which both friends and enemies can enter the hive. When very little nectar is available the colony is constantly alert. Guard bees are persistently present at the entrance of the hive. Would be robbers are intercepted and quite often stung to death. Apparently the guards recognize the examined bees by smell to determine if they are a friend or enemy of the hive.
- Robbers
Robbers can be recognized by their peculiar flying to and fro in front of the hive entrance. This behavior of robber bees is an innate response. Other bees recognize them by a combination of behavior and smell.
- Fanning
In the warm weather, bees reduce the temperature within the hive by fanning at the entrance. During the honey flow season the air currents set up within the hive hasten the elimination of excess moisture from unripe honey in the open cells.
- Habits of Field Bee's
Activities involving flight sometimes begin as early as the 3rd or 4th day of a bee's life but normally takes 2 weeks before foraging trips are made.
Field bees becomes familiar with plants and will only gather from that species of plant as long as food is available. When that species near the hive runs out of food, they will find a new plant species.
It is generally agreed that an individual bee works in a restricted area of the field. She may be attached to a particular group of plants or a single plant.
The speed of the work depends on the type of plant. A normal field bee can visit up to 42 flowers in sweet clover per minute for example.
They travel about 13-16 mile per hour when flying.
- Homing Instinct
Bee's of a colony moved from their old location to a new place will mark the location of the new hive on their first flight. As they fly out they will apparently take a survey of all the surroundings adjoining their home. The circles become larger and larger until they are lost to sight. If the hive is moved a few feet, the bees that have so thoroughly and so carefully marked the location will fly to the old spot and cluster on the ground. Yellow bees, especially Italians, would form a cluster on the spot where the old hive stood and starve to death unless there were another hive within a few inches of where the old hive stood.
- Other Characteristics
Survival of the fittest, old bees are dying all the time.
Colony odor and queen odor, can tell when a new queen enters the hive.
Bees are red blind. Red flowers are rare but not in America. Red flowers get pollinated by insects and butterflies.
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