Page 26 - World of Animals - Issue #36

All about the honeybee

Busy as a bee

Honeybees do much more than just buzz

Like many other social insects, bees live in strict they begin to maintain the hive and perform Honeybees can even lay down their lives
social structures that are made up of several general tasks for the good of the colony from for the sake of the colony. When stinging
different roles. The queen is the only fertile removing waste to helping fresh air circulate. an attacking predator, the barbed sting and
female and she is responsible for laying all of The most important task that the workers associated venom glands are ripped from the
the eggs. This happens during winter, when face is gathering food, and although work goes body. This causes an extremely sharp pain that
she fills each honeycomb cell with a bee-to-be on in the hive around the clock foraging can may discourage the predator from pursuing

around half the size of a grain of rice. A queen only occur in daylight. A honeybee visits over the hive, but the stinging bee will die shortly
honeybee can produce up to 2,000 eggs in a 60 species of plant during its short lifetime to afterwards. This isn’t true of all bees, and
single day and only needs to mate once in her collect as much sweet nectar as possible. Pollen most species can survive to sting again like
lifetime to fertilise all of the eggs she can lay. and nectar are generally the only things a bee bumblebees and leaf cutter bees.
Most of the hatchling bees will be workers. will ever eat, but when these are scarce they Despite their best weapon also being a
These are sterile females that perform all may take plant spores or even sticky honeydew deadly threat, honeybees are unlikely to
of the crucial tasks that keep the hive alive secreted by insects. Once nectar has been go extinct any time soon. They have been
from collecting nectar to acting as security harvested from a flower it is stored in the bee’s domesticated over 15,000 years and are

guards. Bizarrely, worker behaviour changes stomach. It is passed from worker to worker distributed all over the planet. While this is great
as the animal ages and this is known as ‘age and becomes more concentrated as it loses news for honey lovers, the rest of the world’s
polyethism’. Newly hatched bees clean the cells water with each transfer. Some of this collected 4,000 species of bee could face serious danger
in which they developed and prepare them for food is eaten, and the rest is stored to help the of extinction and there is still work to be done
honey storage or another egg. Once this is over colony survive the winter. to protect them.
“An extremely sharp pain may discourage a predator from pursuing the

hive, but the stinging bee will die shortly afterwards.”

The many jobs of Interior decoration
Growing workers cover the
a worker bee inside walls of the hive with a

A honeybee holds down a great multitude of substance called propolis to fill
in any small gaps in the walls.
careers from the first day of life until the very end

Mopping up
Rather than being cleaned
by a parent, young bees tidy

up aer themselves and
leave the comb sparkling.

Serving her majesty
Attendant bees feed and
groom the queen, along with
collecting and spreading a
pheromone that causes all
the colony to follow her.
Wax-making
Glands in the
abdomen secrete
mouldable wax
the bee can use to
repair damaged
honeycomb and
build cells for
new eggs.

Preparing dinner
Drones, the colony’s
males, cannot feed
Honey storage themselves so the
Once the honey workers act as food
has enough water servers for them.
removed, it is
tightly sealed into
the honeycomb The graveyard shift
to prevent it If dead bees or unhatched
absorbing Hatching larvae mount up they
moisture from air. A baby bee gets to work begin to decay and use
straight away as soon as it has up valuable space, so
emerged from the honeycomb. workers dispose of them.
Nursing
Just days into life, a honeybee takes
26 on the task of feeding growing
larvae protein-rich royal jelly.

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