Page 174 - Atlas Of The World's Strangest Animals

174 ATLAS OF THE WORLD’S STRANGEST ANIMALS

Comparisons

With their stout, hairy bodies, European honey bees are perhaps the different lifestyles. Leafcutter bees (Megachilidae species) and
most familiar members of the bee family.These hard-working insects bumblebees (genus Bombus),for instance, have much simpler social
share their range with many other species of bee, and while most of structures and correspondingly smaller colonies.
these are indistinguishable to all but the experts, they have very

Honey bee

Bumblebee

Leafcutter bee

A honey bee colony is like a company.At its head is the European honey bee habitats
Chief Executive Officer (CEO), who is literally the queen
bee. Every hive has just one queen and while all the
workers are female, the queen is the only female that’s
fertile and able to produce the next generation of bees. It’s
also the job of the queen to regulate the hive’s activities by
producing chemicals called pheromones, which guide the
activities of the rest of the community.The workers are
responsible for building and maintaining the nest, feeding
and caring for the young and finding food.
Even though the CEO is the boss, the rest of the colony
decides when a new queen is needed.This occurs either
when an existing queen becomes ill or dies, or when the
hive begins to run out of space. If the queen is ill, she’ll be
often be dispatched by the workers who then begin to
feed one of the undeveloped larvae with royal jelly – a
nutrient-rich food that turns otherwise sterile workers
into fertile, potential queens.The first to hatch will complex business and the bees handle it in a surprising
generally fight it out for the top job, stinging their way.They use a system called quorum sensing and, like bee
rivals to death! society itself, it’s amazingly sophisticated.
If the colony is just too full, then the bees will swarm
and the old queen will head off with around half of her Building a franchise
workers to form a new ‘franchise’. New queens will then A beehive may seem like it’s dominated by the dictatorial
be raised and the successful candidate will take on the queen, but the workers choose when and where to build
business of the old hive. Choosing their new nest site is a a new hive.

(c) 2011 Marshall Cavendish. All Rights Reserved.