![]() ![]() Worker and drone bees live for a few months at most. ![]() ![]() She is the most important bee in the hive. She lays eggs to ensure the hive’s future. Drone bees are always male, and their only job is to mate with the queen.Ī beehive contains anywhere from 10,000 to 80,000 bees-and only one of them is a queen. They collect pollen, feed other bees, and protect the hive. In these societies, all bees fall into one of three groups: worker bees, drones, and queen bees. One of the most interesting examples is the beehive. Some baboons inherit social status from their parents. For example, many animals form ordered societies, much like humans do. As they do so, many scientists realize people have a lot in common with the rest of the animal kingdom. The queen's unfertilized eggs develop into male honeybees, or drones.Humans spend a lot of time studying other animals. The queen's fertilized eggs become female workers or future honey bee queens. Although a queen can lay up to 2,000 eggs a day during active seasons, the amount and pace at which a queen lays her eggs is greatly controlled by weather, food availability and the particular habits of her subspecies of honey bee. The honey bee queen mates at an early age and usually attends only one mating flight, because her sperm reserves allow her to lay millions of eggs throughout her lifetime. Queens mate with several drones in each mating flight, storing the drones’ sperm in her spermatheca. Drones and queens mate in midair and drones die soon after giving their sperm to the queen. Drones discern a queen's presence through her smell, but they will locate a queen by sight. After the new queen masters the hive, she attends a mating flight at a drone congregation site, where thousands of males wait. Queens control their workers by releasing pheromones known as the queen's scent. In the event that two virgin honey bee queens emerge simultaneously, they fight each other to the death. When a virgin queen emerges, she locates other virgin queens and eliminates them one at a time. The sole difference between a honey bee worker and a queen is in nourishment received during the maturation process: workers feed prospective queens with royal jelly for their entire lives, while worker bees are fed royal jelly only during the first two days of their larval stage.Įach colony can be ruled by only one queen at a time. Worker honey bees identify several larvae within the proper age range and begin to condition these larvae to become queens. Lastly, when a honey bee queen suddenly dies, an urgent and unplanned supersedure occurs. The aging queen is killed after the supersedure process. When an old queen begins to falter in performing such responsibilities, workers will induce her replacement, or supersedure. The other half of her workers remain with a new queen and continue to perform their tasks within the old colony.Īlternately, as queen honey bees age, their egg-laying abilities decrease, and they lay their eggs in less organized patterns. A swarm results, wherein the mature queen leaves the colony with half of her workers to establish a new colony. This occurs due to space constrictions, poor performance associated with age and the unexpected death of the queen.īecause the queen is capable of producing up to 2,000 eggs each day, space within a hive can become constrained. Although the honey bee queen is thought by many to be the most important member of her colony, honey bee workers sometimes determine when their colony is in need of a new queen. ![]()
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