The bee colony – various castes and their activities

A honey bee colony has three castes

(i) Queen – only one; functional female

(ii) Workers – 20,000-30,000, sterile females

(iii) Drones – a few only, functional males available before swarming.

Queen bee

• Perfectly developed female with a complete reproductive system.
• Largest in size.
• Wings are small and shriveled.
• Mouth parts are used for sucking food is shorter than that of workers.
• No wax glands.
• It lives for about 3 – 4 years. It may lay eggs at the rate of 800 – 1500 per day.
• Lays two types of eggs:

1) Fertilized – eggs that produce females (either sterile workers or fertile females (new queens).

2) Unfertilized – eggs which produce drones.

Worker bee

• Imperfectly developed females.
• Smaller than the queen.
• Have strong wings to fly.
• These have a large and efficient proboscis (mouth parts packed together like a thin tube) for sucking nectar.
• A well-developed sting is present. Hind legs have a “pollen basket” for collecting pollen.
• The workers have a life span of about 35 days.
• The different duties which they perform agewise are as follows:

Day 1-14 Activity inside the hive such as cleaning the hive, feeding the larvae, etc.

Day 14-20 Guard duties at the entrance to the hive

Day 21- 35 Foraging, i.e. collecting the food (nectar and pollen from the surroundings)

Drones

• Are the male bees produced from unfertilized eggs?
• Their production in the hive synchronizes with the production of the new (virgin) queens.
• At the age of 14-18 days, the drones perform mating flights chasing the virgin queen in the air.
• Drones can live up to about 60 days, although they are stung and killed after the mating.

The emergence of a new Queen, and the Swarming of the old one

• When the queen gets older (usually in the third year) her body gives out a chemical stimulus to the workers to construct a few rearing cells for queens.
• She places one fertilized egg in each of such brood cells.
• The larvae are fed on royal jelly (saliva of workers).
• They turn into pupae and then into queens.
• The first queen to emerge from the brood cells kills the remaining ones.
• Now the old queen takes to swarming along with a mixture of workers of all ages, the old hive to develop a colony at some new site.
• The new queen in the old hive takes to mating flight with the drones and returns to the same hive, as described earlier.