Shortly after mating, the queen will begin to look for a place to hibernate for Winter. The rest of the members of the Bumble Bee colony will die once cold weather arrives. This cycle of Bumble Bees life continues year to year with mated Queen Bumble Bees hibernating and emerging next Spring to start a new nest. Honey bees actually reproduce in a couple of ways. A colony needs to rear a constant supply of new bees to support a population of 40, — 60, bees during the warm season.
So new baby bees are constantly being reared if conditions are good. Another way honey bees reproduce is on the colony level. The colony as a whole can reproduce itself through a process, we call bee swarming. In swarming the colony population will split. Half the population will go to a new location to make a second home.
Like our Bumbles, honey bees mate to reproduce. However, the largest number of bees in the hive are worker bees. Worker bees are female. Numbering into the thousands, they perform all the bee jobs of the colony except 1.
Another type of bee found inside a hive is the Drone bee. A Drone bee is a male bee. This male bee contains semen inside his body that will be used to mate with virgin queens. A honey bee colony normally has one 1 queen bee at a time. She is the mother of all the bees found in the hive. The queen bee is the largest bee in the hive. Mating does NOT take place inside the honey bee colony. This would be a true genetic disadvantage. Queens mating with drones so closely related to them would tend to be unhealthy.
Bad traits would be more likely to pass to the next generation. When the time is right a few days after emergence as an adult , the virgin queen will fly from the hive.
She is often accompanied by several worker bees. We still do not know how the queen knows where to go — or the drones either! Drone bees have large eyes and they put them to good use.
They need to be able to see queens in flight. Several drones chase the virgin queen through the air. Mating takes place in flight. The drone falls to the ground where he will shortly die. Over the next few days, our queen bee mates with 12 — 20 drones. She will never leave the hive again unless she leaves with a swarm.
The genetic variety provided by mating with multiple drones can produce both light and dark colored bees in the same colony.
Queen Bee: Biology, Rearing and Breeding. The Queen honey bee actually has the capacity to lay 2 types of eggs! She may lay an egg fertilized with semen or an unfertilized egg.
Inside the large, long abdomen of the queen bee, are ovaries containing eggs. Over time, eggs will be released from the ovary and travel down the oviduct.
A mated queen has semen stored inside a special structure in her abdomen. This is called a spermatheca. Here over million sperm are kept alive and viable until needed. As the egg travels through her body, the queen has the option to release semen and fertilize the egg — or not.
The honey bee colony requires the efforts of thousands of individuals that work together to sustain the colony. On day 4, worker larvae is switched to a diet of honey and pollen while the queen bee larvae continues to be fed royal jelly throughout her development.
When workers make a new queen, they often make more than one. This gives them the best chance at raising a strong, viable queen. However, there can typically only be one queen bee in a hive, so when the new queens hatch they must kill their competitors.
A newly hatched queen will sting her unhatched rivals, killing them while they are still in their cells. If two queens hatch at once, they must fight to the death. The stinger of a worker bee and a queen bee is actually a modified ovipositor an organ used to lay and position eggs. This means that only the female members of the hive workers and the queen are able to sting and they use this same apparatus to lay eggs, while the males cannot. Although worker bees and queens and both sting and lay eggs, they each function a little differently.
When the worker flies away, the stinger stays put and a pumping venom sac with it. The worker bee will die after several minutes from her injuries, but she will have inflicted maximum damage to her target.
These workers feed and groom her. They also carry away her waste and actually digest her food for her. Without the constant care of her attendants, the queen would die. She even relies on them to digest her food. Queens do not have the same glands workers use to digest their food, so her food is predigested and then fed to her. A queen bee is entirely at the mercy of her attendants for food and at certain times of year, workers will actually put their queen on a diet! In the spring, large colonies divide in two as a means of propagating the species.
This process is called swarming. Roughly half the colony, as well as the queen, leaves the hive and sets out to start a new colony. The remaining bees make a new queen and continue on. Swarming is risky business and takes weeks of planning. One of the challenges is that the queen, who almost never leaves the hive, must fly a great distance to make the new home typically over ft from the original nesting site.
Check out my new book Queenspotting! The book chronicles the fascinating life of the queen bee, includes entertaining stories from my beekeeping adventures and 48 fold-out Queenspotting images that will challenge you to find the queen.
Note: You can support me best as an author and beekeeper by ordering directly from my website. Thinking about starting your own backyard beehive? Ready to try foundationless beekeeping? I run all 50 of my Langstroth hives without foundation…. Each post teaches me something new, and it helps supplement what I am learning in Bee school.
I too thank you Hilary, and agree entirely with the above post , so informative and well written. Hearing the piping of a new queen bee is very special. The effect of the vibrations of her piping for the bees standing on the combs must be mesmerising. I am a high school biology teacher in Ghana. And I find this article very very useful.
Thank you. I shall be following you going forward. What color is a queen bee? My 5 yr old granddaughter says it is green. Queens are the same color as other honey bees. That said, beekeepers sometimes mark the back of their queens with bright paint and green is one of the colors used.
I wonder why that happens? Interesting, except for one very huge mistake, worker bees do NOT die after stinging, unless of course, they die from being slapped to death. I do Apitherapy, and when I started about 1in 8 died, after 10 years, I got to the point where less than 1 in 50 died from stinging.
The bees that sting, lose the stinger, but do not die, live the same lifespan as those that have not stung, and are welcomed back into the hive even without the stinger. There are hundreds of Apitherapists with the same experiences. Just because tens of millions of people believe something does NOT make it fact.
False things do not become fact until they are posted on FaceBook or on the Internet. Do you know if anyone has studied this? I would not be surprised to hear that they could live for several days. It would be fascinating to test this. You could mark bees that have stung with paint and then see if you find them in the hive and document how many days.
Where are you finding the information that they can have the same lifespan as those who did not sting? How can one be sure that the bees observed on the flowers are THE bees that stung?
Do you have any links to share? A bee can sting and go on living only if the sting is not deep enough for the barb to get stuck in the victim which rips the stinger out of the bee thereby fatally wounding them. Sometimes a bee will sting a human but not deep enough to leave the stinger behind such as through a bee suit or clothing. Hi Hillary, thanks for such and interesting post and a great blog.
Lots of people here follow your blog. Thanks Dave — Auckland, New Zealand. In early Septemnee I was standing outside on our blacktop when i turned and saw this thing coming toward me. At first I thought it was a hummingbird moth. Then it fell to the blacktop and I slowly walked toward it and then they got up together and slowly flew away. So what did I see. It was awesome.
This is great info, thank you! I am just starting out and I love learning about these tiny creatures. I was born and raised in SD too but now live in Colorado. Hi Hillary, very happy to have found you and your blog. First of all, thank you for your generosity in sharing your time and knowledge. Really looking forward to following your blogs and also reading the feedback from your subscribers.
Thanks again, David. We can hear them when things are in flux. Pre-swarm, the loud buzzing of the hive can be heard in the house. Recently I heard a strange sound: it was the hive buzzing but loud and changing pitch like a howling wind. A thunderstorm came through and they quieted down. After several days I notice their numbers are down. I have a swarm in my roof. Why are there two types it seems?
There are small regular looking ones and these large furry guys. They are attracted to my lamp at night and are coming through the ceiling! This is such great info — thanks Hilary. Question: I re-queened, but I simply could not find the old queen.
I thorughly checked twice. The hive is quite weak swarmed in Spring but staving off wax moth and hive beetle at this stage thankfully. I put her new Majesty in a week ago. In the hive, there does not as yet appear to be any new brood. There were two new fertilised queen cells, and one queen cell built additionally.
I got rid of these three. What Do Honey Bees Eat? Life Cycle of a Honey Bee. Honey Bee Colony. Honey Bee Eggs. What is the Habitat of a Honey Bee? Honey Bee Colonies Orkin. What Bees Sting? Types of Bee Stings Orkin. Honey Bee Behavior. Connect with Us Our customer care team is available for you 24 hours a day.
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