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| Queen, Drone, Worker |
A colony of bees may contain anywhere from 25,000 to 75,000 individuals, and in rare cases as high as 100,000, all the daughters of one queen-bee. But the average good colony for producing honey will run anywhere from 35,000 to 50,000 workers. During the winter this number will be reduced, possibly a half; for Nature apparently goes on the assumption that it is wise not to produce a lot of unnecessary consumers for winter.
The duties of the worker-bees are quite varied. Primarily their business is to gather nectar or honey; but in reality bees gather nectar, and by some mechanical process which no one seems to understand fully, change the nectar or sucrose into invert sugar or honey. As a matter of fact, they gather nectar and make it over into honey; hence it comes about that bees actually ''make honey.''
- How do bees change nectar or sucrose into honey?
- Propagating wild bees with Leo Sharashkin and his website here.
- Bee extinction: Why we're saving the wrong bees
- Introduction to Solitary Bees and How to Keep Solitary Bees
Bees also gather pollen from the flowers, and store it in combs the same as they store honey. The pollen is used for making a milky-white nitrogenous food into which enters honey to feed the larvae. This food is very much like thin condensed milk. As the larvae develop this same food or ''pap" is made richer and stronger.
Bees also gather a kind of glue for making up what we call bee-glue, or propolis. This is used to seal up all cracks that might let cold air into the hive. The word propolis is derived from two Greek words‚ pro, meaning in front, and polis, a city. In ancient times, especially with some strains of Apis mellifica, the bees used this substance in front of the hive to contract the entrance in order to keep out rodents and other insects, hence the name - in front of the city - or propolis.
Worker-bees naturally fall into two divisions‚young bees for taking care of young brood, building comb, protecting the entrance against robbers, and in other ways performing the inside work of the hive. The older bees, or ''fielders,'' are those that gather the nectar, pollen, and bee-glue. When there are few or no young bees the older ones can and do assume the duties of nurse bees.
The fully developed, or true female, is called the ''queen.'' As already stated, she functionally is much the same as the workers with this difference: Her mouth parts, pollen-gathering apparatus, as well as her sting are atrophied or aborted, while her ovaries are highly developed. She is capable of laying as many as 5000 eggs in a day, but usually 3000 is the limit. During the height of the season she will not average, probably, over 500 eggs a day. At the close of the active season she lets up on her egg-laying, sometimes stopping altogether. This seems to be wise provision in nature to prevent the rearing of a lot of useless consumers that would simply use up all the stores before winter comes on. Along in the fall, if there should be a fall flow, egg-laying will start up again, and a lot of fresh bees will be reared to make up a colony that will go into winter quarters. The bees that gather the crop during an active honey season very seldom if ever live to go into winter quarters. The fruit of their toil goes to their successors.
Only one queen-bee, under normal conditions, is allowed in the hive at a time. The worker bees, apparently, are willing to tolerate one or more queens; but evidently the queens themselves are jealous of each other, and, when they meet, a mortal combat follows, during which one of them receives a fatal sting. The reigning queen-bee, therefore, is often survival of the fittest. Sometimes mother and daughter will get along very nicely together, but along toward fall the mother disappears. Whether the daughter helps to make away with her, whether she dies of old age, or whether the bees take a hand in the matter, we do not positively know.
Two strange queens cannot, as a rule, be let loose in the same hive. The moment they meet they clinch each other in mortal combat, and the one that is successful enough to sting her antagonist comes out the victor. As soon as the vanquished receives her wound she quivers a moment and dies. This is about the only time a queen uses her sting, for she rarely stings a human being, although she may at times sting a worker.
The average queen-bee will remain the mother of a colony for from two to three years. She may live to be as old as five or six years, but these cases are very rare. Usually a queen over two years old is not worth much, and some believe that anything over a year should be replaced by younger blood.
The other individuals in the hive are male bees or drones. Their mouth parts and pollen-gathering apparatus are all very much aborted, and they have no sting. They are very much at the mercy of their sisters, and their only function is to fecundate the queen-bee. This act takes place in the air. for apparently Nature has designed to prevent in-breeding. After the main honey-flow is over, the drones are rudely pushed out at the entrance by their sisters, where they soon starve to death.
The average young queen, when she sallies forth in the air on her wedding trip, may or may not find her consort from the same hive, but the probabilities are she will find a drone from some other hive. As soon as the act of copulation has taken place her male dies. The two whirl around in the air until they drop, when the queen tears herself loose, carrying with her the drone organs. Soon after she enters her hive these are removed by the worker bees, but the spermatic fluid is retained in the spermatheca, where a supply sufficient to last the rest of her life is held. The queen is from that time on able to lay fertilized eggs that will produce bees, and infertile eggs that produce only drones.
The same egg that produces a worker-bee will also produce a queen-bee. The question of whether an egg shall be developed into a queen or an ordinary worker depends almost entirely on conditions. If the bees desire to raise a queen, or several of them, they will build one or more large cells, and feed the baby grubs a special food. In sixteen days a perfect queen will emerge; while in the case of the worker, fed on a coarser food, 21 days elapse.
Such, in brief, is a statement concerning the inmates of the hive and their duties. Before we proceed further it will he proper now to say something about the hive. In doing this we shall start with the old box hive of our forefathers, working up to the modern hive which has made it possible for us to handle bees with such infinite pleasure and profit.
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