Our Children's Corner
THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF BEES by Spyros Skareas, Agronomist and Entomologist
We’ve all seen bees buzzing from flower to flower. We’ve all enjoyed honey, a uniquely nutritious food provided by bees for thousands of years. The world of bees is a world of cooperation, diligence and teamwork. Let’s learn how these beautiful insects live, how they work to produce honey, as well as the secrets of their day to day routine.
Bees, like ants, wasps and termites, are social insects, i.e. the members of the species are divided into different “groups” with separate roles and duties within the hive. A colony has three eusocial bees: worker bees, drones and the queen bee.
Every beehive has a queen bee or “mother” as she is referred to by beekeepers. The queen bee feeds on royal jelly (a special food secreted by young workers between 7 and 13 days old) from the beginning to the end of her life. That is why she lives for 3-4 years and is the only member of the colony to lay eggs. The eggs are laid in the centre of a hexagonal cell, which is where bees undergo their first stages of metamorphosis (egg, larva, pupa).
The queen bee secretes certain chemicals, pheromones, which give orders to the worker bees regarding their duties. The other bees can’t see the queen bee (the hive is dark inside): they sense her presence from the chemicals she secretes.
The worker bees construct the queen cells in which honey bee larvae are fed. The worker bees generally attend to the queen bee’s every need: they feed her all her life, they groom her, and remove her waste. She is a queen, in every sense of the word! When the virgin queen bee emerges from a queen cell (16 days after the egg has been laid), she will seek out rival virgin queens and attempt to kill them until no other queen is left.
Approximately 1 week after her birth, the queen bee will emerge from the hive for the first time, in order to mate with 8-10 drones. She only flies out in the early afternoon and only if the weather is fine. Otherwise, mating is postponed. This “mating in flight” lasts about 20 minutes or until the young queen has received a little sperm from each drone, which she will store and selectively release for the rest of her life. She then returns to the colony and 3 days later, gets to work: she continuously lays eggs, up to 1,500 a day. The workers begin to look after and see to her every need. When the queen lays an egg, she first puts her head in each cell (possibly to check), and if the cell is empty, she turns around, nestles her abdomen in the cell, and deposits an egg.
The egg may develop into a drone or worker bee, depending on whether it has been fertilised. If fertilised (female) and fed honey, the queen larva develops into a worker bee. If fed with endless quantities of royal jelly, then the egg develops into one of the next virgin queen bees.
The worker bees are the tireless machines of the colony. Depending on their age, they take on different roles.
The period between the egg stage and the emergence of the worker bee is 21 days. The first few days it is fed honey and pollen by the other worker bees.
Worker bees live, on average, 15-40 days in Summer, 30-60 days in Spring and Autumn, and up to 140 days in Winter. Winter worker bees live off huge stocks of food in the form of fatty cells which help increase their life cycle.
On average, a forager makes 10 trips a day in order to collect nectar, i.e. it transports 1/3g nectar to the hive. Foraging bees also make 10 trips a day to collect pollen and transport it to the hive. They brush up against the anthers of a flower, thereby forming a pollen ball on their hind legs, and use their tongue (proboscis) to suck a small quantity of nectar. The pollen ball is transported to the hive in a special "pollen basket" or corbicula located on their hind legs.
The drones don’t collect food (they have a small tongue), they don’t produce wax, and they don’t feed the other bees. In a colony, which has between 30,000 and 40,000 bees, there are about 100 drones, and they only live about 20-30 days. The first few days of their lives they are fed exclusively by the young worker bees, after which they begin to feed themselves with stored honey and pollen. They drift from hive to hive and gather in “drone congregation areas”, where mating with the queen bee takes place.
How do we get honey: Bees buzz from flower to flower, collecting nectar. They use their tongue (proboscis) to suck a small drop of nectar and transfer it to the hive, where they work together as a group to ingest and regurgitate the nectar a number of times, mixing it with special enzymes which will ensure its preservation. They then deposit it into the honeycomb cells. When every cell is full, they add wax to preserve the honey as long as possible for the coming Winter.
Respect for Leaders and Democracy. The worker bees follow the orders of the queen bee to the letter. They respect her, protect her and look after her until the day she dies. If the queen needs to leave the hive, they force her to stick to a strict exercise regime (they harass her so she is forced to move more), so that she loses any excess weight she may be carrying, which would otherwise prevent her from flying off! At the same time, the worker bees decide if in Spring the old queen bee needs to leave and be replaced with a younger and stronger leader.
Self-sacrifice. All bees use their sting to defend themselves and their hive if they have to, i.e. they sacrifice their lives, given that when they sting, they lose a part of their body, which leads to their untimely death. But they give up their lives for the greater good.
Organisation. Every single bee, out of the 50,000 a hive may house, has a specific mission and programme. It knows exactly what needs to be done and nothing is left to chance.
Cooperation. Bees build the comb together, they look after the small eggs together, they clean and guard the hive together. That way, the job gets done faster and better.
