Honey Bee

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Honey Bee

Honey Bees:

Honey Bee

General Description

· Honey bee is a social species with three adult castes: queens (only one lays eggs in each colony), drones (males), and workers (sterile females). Individual colonies may have 20,000 to 50,000 bees.

· Honey bees are of various shades of yellow, black, brown, or orange, with the head, antennae, legs, and a portion of the abdomen being dark.

Credit: Andreas Trepte
  • The length of the queen bee is twice the length of the worker bee, its weight is three times its weight, its movement is fast, it has a stinging device and it does not die if you use it. The queen is larger than the workers and has a longer abdomen and small wings.
  • The workers are covered with light-colored hairs, thickest on top of the thorax. They have a fury abdomen and are mostly black with grey stripes on the abdomen.  Worker bees are usually about 1.2-1.5 cm long.
  • The drone is also larger than the workers. The eyes of the male are larger than their counterparts in both the queen and the worker.  They have large wings.  They do not have a stinging device and are not inclined to war at all.

Life Cycle and Common Characteristics

  • Social behavior is highly evolved in the honey bee. In addition to feeding the larvae, workers also amass reserve supplies of honey, which can be used as food by all the members of the colony during periods of adverse conditions.
  • The bee community consists of three components: the queen, the workers, and the males.

The queen:

  • The queen lays eggs that hatch into either workers or males, and she organizes the work inside the hive, starting from organizing the work of the worker bees in harvesting nectar, to making honey, and building wax disks.
  • The queen lays about 1500-2000 fertilized eggs per day during the activity period (early spring and late summer). The fertilized eggs produce female workers and unfertilized males.
  • The age of the queen may reach 3-7 years, while the worker is 45 days.
  • Each colony of bees needs a queen, who lays eggs, binds the members of the colony together, and influences their behavior.
  • Some female bees turn into queens after being fed royal jelly. After leaving her home, the virgin queen searches for the other queens and stings them
  • The virgin queen flies 2-3 days after leaving the royal house to get to know her hive, and this period lasts from 4-11 minutes, and the queen chooses the awake days for fertilization, often on the fifth until the tenth day of her leaving the royal house.

The worker:

  • The total number of workers in the regular hive range from 15,000 workers in the winter and early spring, and 60,000 workers in the spring and summer. The worker bees are females who have a reproductive system, but it is atrophied and unable to lay eggs. As for the egg-laying machine, it is developed into a stinging machine, and this machine ends with the touch that is used in choosing the stinging site.
  • The age of the workers is about 45 days.
    • The worker bees have baskets in which they collect pollen and a proboscis (mouth) with which they suck the nectar of flowers and store it in their stomach.
    • The female workers raise the new queens by isolating the elderly queen. They raise one of the larvae at the age of 1-3 days or from the fertilized eggs to produce a new queen.
    • Workers normally build hives in hollow trees, roof spaces, the wall cavities, or build nests hanging from tree branches.
    • They feed on plant nectar and pollen. They regurgitate honey and secrete beeswax through special glands in their abdomens

The drone:

  • Male bees are characterized by their lack of intelligence compared to workers.
  • The mouth parts of the male are not suitable for collecting nectar, and they do not have baskets on their hind legs to collect pollen, and the male has no glands to secrete wax.
  • The male’s only task is to impregnate the queen. Males do not collect nectar.
  • The male takes 24 days to develop.

Damages and Economic & Medical Implications

  • Honey bee is considered a pest by beekeepers and in other situations
  • The first symptoms that appear after being stung are pain, redness, itching, and a high temperature at the site of the sting. At a later time, swelling and swelling may occur at the site of the sting, and sores and blisters appear. In the most serious and severe cases, itching in the throat, hoarseness, difficulty in breathing, abdominal pain, and diarrhea may arise.
  • The wild or domesticated honey bees can become a serious pest when they establish a nest in or on a structure.
  • If honey bees become well established within the wall voids of a house, large amounts of wax and honey may collect within the wall. If a sufficient amount of honey is inside the walls, enough may be absorbed by plaster or similar porous wall material that an unsightly, and virtually permanent stain may appear on the inside wall.  In addition, the presence of honey in the wall void attracts foraging worker bees from other honey bee colonies, and also, other insects (flies, ants, and beetles) can be attracted to the nest site and may later infest other materials inside the home.