Beekeeping: Part 2

Organization and Castes in a Bee Colony

Honey Bees are sophisticated social insects and they live in families called colonies which comprises of different kinds of individual. They have mainly two sexes: male and female. A single colony consists of about 10,000 to 60,000 bees. A colony consists of a queen (fertile female); a few hundred drones (males) and thousands of workers (sterile females). In addition, there are about 5,000 eggs and 25 to 30,000 immature bees in various stages of their development, called the brood. Of these, some 10,000 newly hatched, are the larvae, which have to be fed by the workers, while the remainder, after the larvae stage, are pupae, sealed into their cells by the workers to mature. They are called the sealed brood.

COMPARATIVE SIZES OF THE DIFFERENT CASTE

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Queen Bee

The Queen bee is a reproductive female. There is only one queen in the hive and her job is to lay eggs and produce queen substance (pheromones). When a new queen starts life, she mates only once with drones outside the hive. A good queen lays between 1,500 - 2,000 eggs per day but after two years she lays fewer eggs. She lives for three to five years. It is very difficult to find the queen but she can be recognized by her long and slender body and short wings. She is fed by the young workers and is bigger than the other occupants due to massive feeding especially with royal jelly. She has a sting that is only used against rival queens. Her pheromones or scents serve to control the other bees and harmonize the colony’s behavior.

The Queen bee can be marked on the dorsal surface of the abdomen for easy identification and to avoid being crushed accidentally during hive manipulations.

Drones

The Drones are males and are bigger than the workers. They develop from unfertilized eggs and their major task is to mate with the queen. Workers begin to produce drone cells before queen cells. The cells (one of the “horizontal” types of cells) are larger and the queen detects them with her hind legs and deposits non-fertilized eggs.

The drones are stingless, very large eyes which are used to spot the Queen during mating. Drones look large and square and make a loud buzzing noise when they fly. Drones are dependent on the workers for food because their proboscis is short and cannot collect food for them. There can be about 200 to 500 drones in a hive but in time of food shortage the workers chase the drones out of the hive to die. Their lifespan is usually not more than 2 months. A hive that has too much drones has a problem because the hive will yield below what it should.

Role of the Drones

§ Drones emerge during the swarming season. When 4 days old, they begin leaving on mating flights, traveling short distances to special “drone congregation areas”, where they meet with drones from other colonies in the area. They hover here in sustained flight and await virgin queens. These DCAs orient toward visible landmarks and tend to be consistent year after year (always with different individuals).

§ A virgin queen is urged out of the nest by mildly aggressive behavior of the workers and she takes wing. As she approaches a DCA she emits 9ODA from mandibular glands and as it disperses downwind it attracts males from a distance of 10 meters or more. Mating is in the air and lethal to the male who is instantly paralyzed and drops to the ground. The queen makes up to 3 to 12 flights per day, and mates with 7-17 drones. She stores their sperm in her spermatheca and this one period of mating is sufficient for a lifetime supply.

§ The newly-mated queen either participates in an after-swarm or destroys her rivals and takes over the nest.

The Workers

Most of the bees in the hive are workers- they are all sterile females. The worker bees’ change tasks according to age. Young worker bees clean the hive, feed both young and the Queen and make the beeswax combs. They control the temperature of the hive by flapping their wings and also guard the hive. Older workers scout for food and collect the pollen, nectar, water and propolis. They have a sting plus special glands and organs to help them to defend the colony against enemies. The workers are also responsible for the honey formation process. The lifespan of a worker bee is 7-8 weeks during the main flowering season when they work hard. They can live longer during dormant periods.

Types of Worker Bees

Based on the activities the bees carry out in the hives, they can be divided into:

· House bees: They clean and polish the cells/hive/comb, feed the brood, care for the queen, remove debris, making orientation flights, building combs, handle incoming nectar, pollen, and water, build beeswax combs, guard the entrance, executions of unwanted members, and air condition  and ventilate the hive during their initial few weeks as adults.

· Field bees: they are active from 5:15am to 6:30pm. They forage for nectar, pollen, water, and propolis (plant sap). By 5.20a.m. They also take on scout duties.

· Scout bees: They perform activities like location of food source and signaling others by series of dance-like movements. Scout bees also search for suitable accommodation while the rest of the swarm wait on the tree branch or in small enclosure. Their dance-like movements depends on:

1. Distance

2. Direction

3. Angle from the north

These factors determine whether they display waggle or circular dance.

· Robber bees: All worker or foraging bees are thieves. They steal things like honey from other colonies and honey harvesters from other swarms during the daytime, especially in the sunny and bright weather. Robber bees visit other colonies’ hives and try to take honey in order to store it in their own hive.

Life Cycle of a Bee

Each bee in the course of its life passes through 4 stage metamorphosis: Egg→ Larva→ Pupa→ Adult.

During the development stages, the eggs, larvae and pupae are known as brood.

STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT OF A HONEY BEE

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The egg laid by the queen looks like a small grain of rice or hair nit. Whether an egg will develop into a queen, drone or worker depends on the type of cell it is laid in (it is very important to learn the difference between capped brood and capped honey – capped brood is usually dark brown and capped honey is usually white or creamy in colour).

The egg develops into larva, which looks like a white maggot. All larvae are fed on royal jelly for the first three days after which larvae for workers and drones are fed on pollen (bee bread) and honey put into the cell by the nurse bees (younger worker bees). The queen feeds on royal jelly throughout the life.

The Honeybee Nest

The nest of a bee colony consists of a number of vertical combs which hang parallel to each other at a distance of about 10mm (referred to as bee space). The bee space is important in the construction of modern bee hives. The combs, about 25 mm wide, are composed of hexagonal cells. There are two types of comb cells:

· The smaller (worker) cells – Here in the lower part of the comb, the bees rear worker brood. In the upper part, they store pollen and honey. The difference between the workers brood cells and the honey cells is that the later cells have flat cappings.

· The larger (drone) cells – These cells are where the bees rear drones. Sometimes, the bees build a queen cells in which they rear queens. The queen cells have cup like coverings which make them conspicuous.

PEANUT-SHAPED QUEEN CELL

LIFE SPAN OF BEES

PEBBLY TEXTURED DRONE CELLS 

The larvae are sealed with a wax capping in the comb after six days where they turn into pupae and later emerge as adult bees as shown in the table below.

Habitat

The ideal habitat for commercial honey and beeswax production is on savannah (irrigated) and semi-arid lands which have low annual rainfalls (125-1250mm). The tropical deciduous forest with annual rainfall between 1275-1875mm can also support considerable bees’ activity due to the presence of trees like coffee which require honey bee pollination.