David Withrington - How they live... Bees: Learn All There Is to Know About These Animals!

The European Honey Bee (Apis mellifera) lives in a large community called a colony. This consists of tens of thousands of worker bees, a few hundred to a few thousand drones, and one single queen. The bees make the honeycomb their home. It is a wax formation made up of hexagonal cells, which serves as a cradle to the members of the bee colony, while it is also a space for storing honey and pollen. The cells in the honeycomb are two-sided with a joined base, and the honeycomb is constructed vertically and attached to the roof of the hive. Bees have developed life in a community to such an extent that they are not able to survive on their own. The role of the worker bee changes with age. As it hatches, its first role in the hive is that of housekeeper. It cleans the cells and their immediate surrounds. It then becomes a nurse. It develops milk glands in its head, which secrete nutritious royal jelly, the food for the queen and the young larvae. Its next role in the hive is that of a builder. It develops wax glands, which secrete wax scales on the underside of its abdomen. This is construction material for the honeycomb. The builder' bee constructs new honeycombs and repairs old ones. The last role of the young bee in the hive is that of a guardian at the top of the hive. After this, it begins to make journeys from the hive and becomes a forager bee. Breeding bees is called beekeeping, and the people who keep bees are known as beekeepers. Originally, people would take honey from wild colonies that made themselves a home in hollow tree trunks and rock cavities, but later they adapted to beekeeping working with the bees. They housed them in hives, which they placed in bee houses, providing shelter from unfavourable weather conditions and predators. Beekeeping is widespread in todays world. Bee-hives are generally no longer traditional with fixed combs. Nowadays beekeepers make use of movable honeycombs, which are bee- friendly and easier to manage. Of all the bee products, honey and wax used to be most valued. Honey was used as a sweetener, whereas wax was used for lighting in an era before we had electricity. In more recent times, propolis, pollen, royal jelly and bee venom have gained value and are used in therapy together with honey and wax. However, all bee products, as important and beneficial to health as they may be, pale into insignificance in comparison to the role that bees perform in pollinating plants.

WORKER BEES

Here we see the bees on a recently constructed honeycomb. Honeycombs in which bees have yet to hatch are called virgin honeycombs. During their development each bee moults in the cell, and the excess skin is left on the cell wall. Eventually the honeycomb turns brown or even black from the moults, and the diameter of the cell significantly reduces in size. The cells in the honeycomb have a typically hexagonal shape.

THE QUEEN

The queen bee is the head of the colony. Its role is to lay eggs. It lives in the hive, leaving it firstborn as a young bee to mate with the drones in the air, and when the colony swarms the old queen also leaves the hive. It can live for several years, unlike the worker bees, which live for a few weeks in the high season or for six months if they manage to survive the winter. If the queen is well fed, it can hatch more than 2,500 eggs!

DRONES

Drones are the male members of the bee colony. They do not collect honey. Their sole task is reproduction. Their eyes are significantly more developed than the eyes of the worker bees so that they can follow the young queen in flight. In August, when the breeding season is over, the bees drive the drones from the hives, often even killing them. Unlike the worker bees and the queen, the drones develop from unfertilized eggs (this is called parthenogenesis).

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE QUEEN BEE

This takes place in large cells called queen cells, located at the edge of the comb (see photo). As they have plenty of space, their development is not restricted. The larvae are fed constantly with pure royal jelly, a protein-rich food that fully supports their development. A queen with developed female sexual organs will grow from these larvae, and will, after mating with the drones, take forward the new generation of bees.

POLLINATION

Bees are important pollinators of flowering plants. Large numbers survive the winter, which is why they are the most numerous among the insects in the spring when the fruit trees blossom. In addition, they always visit one type of flower, thus ensuring successful pollination within a plant species. Many other insects fly aimlessly from blossom to blossom without any regard for its type, which makes their job of pollinating futile or merely incidental. Without bees, there would be no fruit or many other crops and a greatly reduced abundance of plants in the wild.