Queen bee - The queen bee is the only fully female bee. She lays eggs from which all others in the hive are born. She is slightly longer than the drones and workers with a long tapered abdomen.
- It takes a queen 16 days to develop from an egg to a larva to a pupa before she emerges from her cell. The new queen is a known as a virgin queen until she mates.
- The most significant event in the queen’s life is the mating flight. This occurs over a couple of days when, as a virgin queen, she flies out of the hive to copulate with as many as 15 drones. On this flight, she stores enough sperm to last her lifetime which maybe as long as four or five years. After the flight, the queen returns to the hive with a distended abdomen and sets to laying thousands and thousands of eggs. The queen may never leave the hive again, unless she leaves as part of a swarm.
- The queen bee lays two kinds of eggs: drone (male) eggs, and worker (female) eggs. The queen measures the size of cells with her forelegs as drone cells are larger than worker cells. The queen fertilises the eggs in worker cells with sperm and leaves eggs in the larger drone cells unfertilised. Fertilised eggs become workers and unfertilised eggs become drones.
Worker bee - Worker bees are non-reproductive female bees. They keep the colony going in every way except reproductively, working until they die, aged about six weeks. Workers perform a variety of tasks during their short life – these tasks are largely determined by age.
- Life as a worker bee: Workers emerge at 21 days - a pupa uses its mandibles to chew its way through a cocoon inside a waxen cell, then through the wax ceiling, to emerge as a supple young bee. It starts work immediately.
- Tasks: From day one they are keeping cells clean and guarding against interlopers. At about six days they will be able to feed baby larvae as well as attend the queen, cap brood larvae with wax, groom and feed younger bees. At one week, workers start to secrete wax from glands on their abdomens. They chew this wax to soften it, then use their legs together to manipulate the wax into regular hexagonal cells: the honeycomb.
- At 12 days, workers move into food storage, packing pollen into cells they have helped make. The next stage in her working life is to make honey which will feed the colony during winter. Older worker bees bring nectar back to the hive which is passed into the mouths of the younger worker bees. It looks like they are kissing. The younger bees spit it into the wax cells where enzymes from these salivary glands help to thicken the honey.
- Finally, workers become foragers at about three weeks. As foragers they search for and collect nectar, pollen and water. They also collect plant resin to make propolis.
Drone bee The drone bee (male) emerges from its cell at 24 days and unlike the worker bee is stingless. They are shorter than the queen and about twice as heavy as the worker. The role of the drone is to mate with a new queen, preferably from another hive. After they have mated they die. Drones are unable to collect food and can be driven from the hive by workers if floral resources diminish or stores of food get too low.
Swarms - A swarm is a colony of bees in a transitional phase moving from a parent hive/colony to another hive/nest. A swarm is a primeval tactic triggered by overcrowding in the hive which inturn is caused by an abundance of flora and usually warmer conditions. Swarms are valuable colonies to capture because they have the old queen which has already proved itself having survived the previous winter when any weaknesses (in the queen) would have shown up. Early signs of swarming are: increased production of drones, overcrowding and the creation of queen cells. It is possible for a hive to swarm more than once in prime seasons.
Supersedure - Supersedure is the replacement of the old queen with a new one by spontaneous action of the colony. It takes place when the old queen has passed her egg laying peak and is losing her fertility. This maybe due to age, injury, stress or any factor contributing to less than optimum performance. (It can also occur in strong colonies where the queen is laying well. In such circumstances, it’s more to do with favourable conditions like warmth and an abundance of flora than the queen’s performance.) The old queen will leave the hive with a cluster of adult worker bees – this is a swarm. Supersedure in its simplest form is nature’s way of re-queening. Prior to the old queen leaving the hive, worker bees feed royal jelly to several of the queens fertilised eggs. These become queen cells and one will ultimately become the new queen.
- In a managed colony/hive, it is preferable to replace the queen with one of selected breeding to ensure both better productivity and temperament. Yet while a superseded queen only shares half of her mother’s genes they are arguably better adapted to the new environment through natural progression than would be an introduced queen. Notwithstanding, commercial beekeepers try to minimise supersedure, by replacing old queens with selectively bred queens (re-queening) regularly
Acknowlegements Much but not all of the information recorded here has been taken from: Honey: The story of producing honey in Australia the Workboot Series (Catriona Nicholls);A Dictionary of Scientific and Practical Beekeeping (Robert B. Gulliford); Landline ABC TV May 1 2005 (Joanne Shoebridge);Bees, Beekeepers, Honey, Pollination – Queensland Beekeepers Association (Marion Weatherhead)
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