bees’ ovaries, thus ensuring that the queen is the only egg-laying female in the hive. They act as a chemical communication that “all is well — the queen is in residence and hard at work.” As a queen ages, these pheromones diminish, and when that happens, the colony knows it’s time to supersede her with a new, young queen.
Pheromones are essential in controlling the colony’s well-being. This queen substance makes its way around the hive like a bucket brigade. The queen’s attendants pick up the scent from the queen and transfer it by contact with neighboring bees. They in turn pass the scent onto others, and so it distributes throughout the colony. So effective is this relay that if the queen were removed from the hive, the entire colony would be aware of her loss within an hour. When the workers sense the lack of a queen, they become listless, and their drive to be productive is lost. Without leadership, they nearly lose their reason for being! First they’re unhappy and mope around, but then it dawns on them: “Let’s make a new queen.”
The industrious little worker bee
The majority of the hive’s population consists of worker bees. Like the queen, worker bees are all female. Worker bees that are younger than 3 weeks old have working ovaries and can lay eggs, but they are not fertile, as the workers never mate and therefor lack sperm to fertilize eggs. Workers also look different than the queen. They are smaller, their abdomens are shorter, and on their hind legs they possess pollen baskets, which are used to tote pollen back from the field.
Like the queen, the worker bee has a stinger. But her stinger is not a smooth syringe like the queen’s. The sting is three-shafted, with each shaft having barbs (resemble a fish hook). The barbs cause the stinger, venom sack, and a large part of the bee’s gut to remain in a human victim — a Kamikaze effort to protect the colony. Only in mammals (such as humans) does the bee’s stinger get stuck. The worker bee can sting other insects again and again while defending its home.
The life span of a worker bee is a modest six weeks during the colony’s active season. However, worker bees live longer (four to eight months) during the less-active winter months. These winter workers are loaded with protein and are sometimes referred to as “Fat Bees.” The term “busy as a bee” is well earned. Worker bees do a considerable amount of work, day in and day out. They work as a team. Life in the hive is one of compulsory cooperation. What one worker could never do on her own can be accomplished as a colony. During the busy season, the worker bees literally work themselves to death. The specific jobs and duties they perform during their short lives vary as they age. Understanding their roles will deepen your fascination and appreciation of these remarkable creatures.
From the moment a worker bee emerges from her cell, she has many and varied tasks clearly cut out for her. As she ages, she performs more and more complex and demanding tasks. Although these various duties usually follow a set pattern and timeline, they sometimes overlap. A worker bee may change occupations, sometimes within minutes, if there is an urgent need within the colony for a particular task. They represent teamwork and empowerment at their best!
Initially, a worker’s responsibilities include various tasks within the hive. At this stage of development, worker bees are referred to as house bees. As they get older, their duties involve work outside of the hive as field bees.
House bees
Worker honey bees spend the first few weeks of their lives carrying out very specific tasks within the hive. For this reason, they are referred to as house bees. The jobs they do (described in the following sections) are dependent on their age.
Housekeeping (days 1 to 3)
A worker bee is born with the munchies. Immediately after she emerges from the cell and grooms herself, she engorges herself with pollen and honey. Following this binge, one of her first tasks is cleaning out the cell from which she just emerged. This cell and other empty cells are cleaned and polished and left immaculate to receive new eggs or to store nectar and pollen.
Undertaking (days 3 to 16)
The honey bee hive is one of the cleanest and most sterile environments found in nature. Preventing disease is an important early task for the worker bee. During the first couple weeks of her life, the worker bee removes any bees that have died and disposes of the corpses as far from the hive as possible. Similarly, diseased or dead brood are quickly removed before becoming a health threat to the colony.
Should a larger invader (such as a mouse) be stung to death within the hive, the workers utilize propolis to deal with that situation. Obviously a dead mouse is too big for the bees to carry off. So the workers completely encase the corpse with propolis (a brown, sticky resin collected from trees and sometimes referred to as bee glue). Propolis has significant antibacterial qualities. In the hot, dry air of the hive, the hermetically sealed corpse becomes mummified and is no longer a source of infection. The bees also use propolis to seal cracks and varnish the inside walls of the hive.
Working in the nursery (days 4 to 12)
The young worker bees tend to their baby sisters by feeding and caring for the developing larvae. On average, nurse bees check a single larva 1,300 times a day. They feed the larvae a mixture of pollen and honey, and royal jelly — rich in protein and vitamins — produced from the hypopharyngeal gland in the worker bee’s head. The number of days spent tending brood depends on the amount of brood in the hive and the urgency of other competing tasks.
Attending royalty (days 7 to 12)
Because her royal highness is unable to tend to her most basic needs by herself, some of the workers do these tasks for her. They groom and feed the queen and even remove her excrement from the hive. These royal attendants also coax the queen to continue to lay eggs as she moves about the hive.
Stocking the pantry (days 12 to 18)
During this stage of their life, young worker bees take nectar from foraging field bees that are returning to the hive. These house bees deposit this nectar into cells earmarked for this purpose. They add an enzyme to the nectar and set about fanning the cells to evaporate the water content and turn the nectar into ripened honey. The workers similarly take pollen from returning field bees and pack the pollen into other cells. Both the ripened honey and the pollen, which is often referred to as bee bread, are food for the colony.
Fanning (days 12 to 18)
Worker bees also take a turn at controlling the temperature and humidity of the hive. During warm weather and during the honey flow season, you’ll see groups of bees lined up at one side of the entrance, facing the hive. They fan furiously to draw air into the hive. Additional fanners are in position within the hives. This relay of fresh air helps maintain a constant temperature (93 to 95 degrees Fahrenheit [34 to 35 degrees Celsius]) for developing brood. The fanning also hastens the evaporation of excess moisture from the curing honey. Chapter 15 takes a detailed look at what makes honey so special.
ROYAL JELLY: THE FOOD OF ROYALTY
Royal jelly is the powerful, creamy substance that transforms an ordinary worker-bee egg into a queen bee and extends her life span from six weeks to several years! It’s made of digested pollen and honey or nectar mixed with a chemical secreted from a gland in a nurse bee’s head.
