Wednesday, 6 June 2012

The honeybees

Did you know there is estimated 25 000 bee species in the world? And there are 12 different types of bees, at the bottom of this post you will find a link where the 12 types of bees are discussed. From the 12 types of bees we are going to have a look at the honeybees and learn more from them.

The honeybee colony has three casts of bees namely, the queen, the drone (male) and the worker (female). The queen bee is the one that lays the eggs, she lives up to three years or more. In her lifetime she can lay approximately half a million eggs, so that is almost 2000 - 3000 eggs per day.

But where does the queen come from if the queen only lays eggs of male (drone) and female (worker) bees? Well the queen is raised from a normal worker egg, the only difference is that particular egg gets royal jelly and the queen develops.


The queen bee.

The drone is twice the size of the worker, but is smaller than the queen. They do  not work like the worker bee in the colony, their only role is to mate with the queen. Therefore the drone is distinctive for his big and strong wings, to be able to take part in the mating process.


The drone bee.
 Most of the beehive consists of worker bees, and like I have already said in my previous posts is that the worker bee lives about 40 days during season time and during winter when there is no nectar to harvest, they live up to 16 weeks. But like any worker you will have specific instructions to follow.

This is the activities the worker bee completes in a certain amount of days:
Period
Work activity
Days 1 – 3
Cleaning cells and incubation
Day 3 – 6
Feeding older larvae
Day 6 – 10
Feeding younger larvae
Day 8 – 16
Receiving honey and pollen from field bees
Day 12 – 13
Wax making and cell building
Day 14 onwards
Entrance guards; nectar and pollen foraging









The worker bee.

I hope that this information was interesting and that you shall can recognize the different types of honeybees, the queen, the drone and the worker bee and know what their responsibilities are to the honeybee colony.


Here you can see the different sizes of the bees.
From the left: The queen, the worker and the drone.

The worker bee flying pollen.
Here is the link I promised: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/types-of-bees.html
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2 comments:

  1. Thelma6 June 2012 at 06:54

    It was very interesting to read about all the differnt types of bees, BUT and this is a big BUT, for me they are all the same because when they sting you it hurts like hell! Recently I had a bee sting on my arm and it made this big red "thing" that was very itchy and took a week to heal properly!

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  2. Olga Grunder7 June 2012 at 01:24

    Hehe, I will agree with you on that one. Unfortunately that is one of the negative things of the honeybee, is their sting. But that is their only way of defending themselves. Did you know when they sting someone they die, because the stinger is torn off from the bee. So a bee sacrifice their life on stinging someone and that I think is very brave of them. The bee only stings someone or something if the bee feels his life is in danger or like a animal that stinks or making a big noise close to the beehive and if you try to hit the bee or covering it, it will sting you. So if you see a bee you just stand still, do not move and the bee will fly away after a few minutes.

    I hope a bee would not sting you again *.

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