The Honey Bee
(Apis mellifera)
Sham S. Misri
The honey bees are
socially organised insects. Colonies of honeybees show the three
characteristics of fully social organization:
Individuals of the
same species cooperate in caring for the young
There is a
reproductive division of labour with more or less sterile individuals, working
on behalf of the reproductive.
There is a caste
division of into three phenotypes.
There is an overlap
of at least two generations in which the offspring contribute to colony labour.
Originally the
honeybees’ distribution was Africa, Europe and Asia. However, its current
worldwide distribution owes much to the activities of man. Colony sizes can
reach tens of thousands and their organization represents the most complex seen
in social Insects.
Where are the Honey Bees going?
Honey bees are
dying, and we are not sure why? A new report from United States “government
says there could be many reasons why bees are disappearing.
Bees have been dying off in droves around the world since
the mid-1990s. First in France, then in the U.S. and elsewhere, colonies have
been mysteriously collapsing with adult bees disappearing, seemingly abandoning
their hives. When this phenomenon hit the U.S. (2006), it was named “Colony
Collapse Disorder”. Each year commercial beekeepers have reported annual losses
of nearly 32%. Such losses are unique. The honey bees are the most economically
important pollinators in the world. According to a recent U.N. report, of the
100 crops that provide 90% of the world's food, over 70 is pollinated by bees.
In the U.S. alone, honey bees’ economic contribution is valued at over $15
billion.
Why should we care about bees?
They are important
to the food we eat. The helpful insects pollinate many crops. Fewer bees could
lead to fewer almonds, apples, blueberries and other crops. Honeybees live in
hives in groups called colonies.
Beekeepers started
noticing that bees were missing from their colonies in 2006. Since then,
thousands of colonies and billions of bees have been lost. In 1947, there were
6 (sis) million honey bee colonies in the United States. Today, there are about
21/2 two and a half million.
Scientists say that
if honey bees die, the United States could face a “pollination disaster.”
Possible causes
Scientists say that
bee problem couold be caused by a mite, or tiny bug. Or diseases could be
killing bees. Beekeepers ship colonies to help pollinate crops. The trip may
weaken bees. Pesticides may also be to blame. Pesticides are chemicals used to keep
insects from harming crops.
Bees are also dying
in Europe. Farmers there will not be allowed to use certain pesticides for two
years. The pesticides will still be used in the US.
Will bees bounce
back in Europe? If so, we may be closer to understanding how to help our bees.
Honeybees make
Beeswax. People use beeswax to make crayons and candles.
The Honey Bee
The bees, wasps and ants are social insects. This means that
they tend to live in colonies where all the individuals are of the same family,
often the offspring of one mother. In the more highly organized societies there
is a division of labour in which individuals carry out particular duties.
The bodies of bees are divided into head, thorax and
abdomen, with three pairs of legs and two pairs of wings on the thorax. The
fore and hind wings on each side are linked by hooks and grooves so that they
move together in flight.
The mouth parts consist of a "tongue" or labium,
which can be enclosed near the head by the labial palps and maxillae. Nectar,
from the flowers can be drawn up the grooved surface of the labium.
The ovipositor, through which the queen lays her eggs in the
wax cell, is modified in the workers to form a sting.
There are three kinds of bee in a colony: in the summer, a
few hundred drones or males, one egg-laying female, or queen, and from 20 to 80
thousand sterile females or workers. The mature queen is usually easily
recognized by her large abdomen.
The Queen
The queen is
diploid. The queen is responsible for
the production of all the eggs. The honeybee queen has taken this strategy to
extremes and does nothing else other than produce eggs.
A queen bee may live from two to five years and, except for
a short period at the end of her life when one of her daughters takes over the colony;
she is the only egg-laying female. All the members of the colony whether drones
or workers, are her offspring. She spends all her time laying eggs, perhaps up
to 1500 a day, each one being placed in a wax cell made by the workers. The
queen feeds herself in the hive. The nearest workers turn towards her, lick her
body and feed her by a special secretion of their salivary glands, called
"royal jelly", on to their proboscis from which the queen can absorb
it.
The queen usually mates only once in her life (though second
and third mating often happens). The queen stores the sperms received from the
drone in a sperm sac in her abdomen. This store of sperms lasts her for the two
or more years of egg-laying, a small quantity being released with each
fertilized egg laid.
When the store of sperms is used up she may continue to lay
eggs but they are all unfertilized and will become drones. By this time one of
her daughters has been reared as a queen and is ready to take over the
egg-laying. The queen established the
colony after a reproductive flight in which she mated with a male bee called a
drone. This is the only mating the Queen will perform and she retains the sperm
from this mating, fertilising eggs as required.
Life history
Each egg is laid in one of the hexagonal wax cells and
hatches into a tiny, white, legless larva. The larva feeds on substances
deposited in the cell by the workers; it grows, pupates in the cell, hatches as
an adult bee and finally emerges from the cell into the hive. The eggs hatch
after three to four days and by nine days are fully grown and ready to pupate.
The workers put a capping over the cells at this time. Ten or eleven days later
the capping is bitten away and the adult emerges. The times given above vary
with changes of temperature and according to whether the bee is becoming a
drone, worker or queen.
Drones
Drones are male and
haploid. The drones are produced from the unfertilised egg of the queen.
Drones as the name implies, contribute little if anything to the care of
the colony.
The drones, who live for about four to five weeks and do not
work inside the hive, are fed by the workers or help themselves from the store
of pollen and nectar in the combs. Their function is to fertilize a new queen.
In the autumn, or when conditions are poor, they are turned out of the hive
where, unable to find food for themselves, they soon die.
The Workers
These are female
and diploid. The worker is produced by the fertilization of an egg from the
Queen and sperm from the earlier drone mating.
Within a single
colony there will be thousands of workers. The life span of a worker is about
40 days. There is further differentiation of task for the workers as they nurse
and tend the brood of larva during the early part of their life and then change
to foraging in the latter period of their 40 days.
The foraging
workers are the Bees that we see searching and gather food for the colony.
The workers are female bees whose reproductive organs do not
function. They collect food from outside the hive and store it. They make the
wax cells and feed the developing larvae.
The workers prepare three kinds of cell: worker cells about
5 mm across, drone cells about 6 mm across, and queen cells quite different
from the others. The queen cells are larger and made individually, pointing
downwards or bottom of the comb. The relative numbers of these three kinds of
cell seem to depend on the time of the year, the temperature, the abundance of
food and condition of the colony. Normally, the worker cells predominate.
Eggs are laid by the queen in the brood area. This is where
the temperature is about 32° C, kept so by the heat given out by the bees'
bodies. The queen moves over the brood area, laying eggs randomly in any of the
three types of cell she encounters, by placing her abdomen in the cell and
depositing a single egg. The eggs placed in the larger, drone cells, are not
fertilized, and this results in the eggs developing into a male bee or drone.
In the queen and worker cells, fertilized eggs are laid.
For the first three days after hatching, all the larvae are
fed on a protein-rich, milky secretion, called royal jelly, which comes from
the salivary glands of workers of a certain age. The grubs in queen cells
continue to be fed on royal jelly for the rest of their lives, but those in
drone or worker cells are "weaned" onto a mixture of dilute nectar
and pollen. If a one-to-three-day old larva is transferred from a worker to a
queen cell, it will receive the diet of royal jelly and develop into a queen.
Thus, though there is no difference between the eggs and young larvae in queen
and worker cells, their different treatment by the workers results in their
becoming quite distinct types of bee.
Exactly what aspects of their feeding causes this is not
known for certain. It may be the absence of pollen from the queen's diet, the
cessation of royal jelly in the worker's diet, the super-abundance of food
placed in the queen cells or a vitamin-like chemical fed to the queen larvae in
the early stages. After three days, worker grubs cannot be reared as queens,
even if they are placed in queen cells and fed on royal jelly.
Drones, then, develop from unfertilized eggs in wide cells,
queens and workers from fertilized eggs which are fed differently as larvae.
Life of a queen
When a new queen emerges she is fed by the workers. She
bites a hole in any other occupied queen cells that she finds. The workers
usually tear down the other queen cells that have been bitten into and destroy
the occupants.
For a few days the queen leaves the hive for short flights
lasting, a minute to about 15 minutes. During these flights she learns the
geography of the district around the hive. On one of these flights she is
pursued by drones, but not necessarily from her own hive; in fact, they do not
follow her from the hive but are already waiting outside. One of them catches
the queen and mates with her, depositing in her vagina sperms which eventually
find their way into her sperm sac. She now returns to the hive, and soon after
begins to lay eggs.
From glands in her head, the queen produces a mixture of
chemicals called pheromones (‘queen substance’). When the workers ‘lick’ her
body, the pheromones suppress their fertility. When, at the end of her life,
the queen ceases to produce these pheromones, some workers start to lay eggs
which, being unfertilized, produce only drones. They do, however, start
building new queen cells.
Division of labour
The tasks undertaken by a worker bee depends partly on its
age and partly on the immediate needs of the colony. After hatching, she is fed
by other workers and spends a good deal of time standing still on the comb. She
does, however, clean out cells from which bees have recently hatched by
removing the cast larval cuticles. On the fourth day she feeds on honey from
the store cells and eats a good deal of pollen. Between the third and fifth day
she feeds older larvae by placing nectar, water and pollen in their cells.
The pollen that she eats is rich in protein and helps her salivary,
brood food glands to become active. By the fifth day they secrete the brood
food or royal jelly which is fed to the younger larvae. After ten or twelve
days these glands cease to function effectively but wax glands on the underside
of her abdomen begin to secrete wax which the worker uses for comb-building and
repair.
While in the hive, the worker collects pollen and nectar
from the incoming field bees and stores it in the cells. She also processes the
nectar and begins its conversion to honey, and cleans the hive by removing the
dead bees from its floor.
After three weeks of hive duties the worker becomes a
forager and spends the daylight hours collecting water, nectar, and pollen and
carrying it back to the hive. This work she may continue for about three weeks
before she dies.
The old bees thus performing "nurse" duties and
young bees search for food in wide areas. A few of the young bees do duty as
guard bees, protecting the hive from invasion by robber bees.
Food
The worker bees collect nectar from the flowers. The nectar
is pumped up and swallowed into the honey sac, a region of the gut. From the
honey sac the nectar can be brought back into the mouth. On reaching the hive the
nectar is deposited there. The nectar is a watery sugar solution when
collected, but it is processed by the house bees to which it is passed. These
workers repeatedly swallow it, mix it with enzymes and bring it up from the
stomach into the mouth. The enzyme action and the evaporation of water result
finally in its conversion to honey. Nectar contains very little protein, and
the pollen collected by the bees makes up this deficiency.
Pollen is collected by combing off with the legs the grains
which adhere to the bee's body after it has visited a flower. The pollen and
nectar paste is pushed into the pollen basket on the tibia, where it is
retained by the fringe of setae. All this may be done while the bee hovers in
the air or while hanging from the flower. The forager returns to the hive with
the two packs of pollen and pushes them off into an empty cell or into one with
some pollen already in it.
The younger house bees then break up the pollen masses and
pack them down into the cell. When the cell is full it may be covered with a
little nectar and sealed over. Both pollen and honey sealed in the store cells
are eaten by the bees in the winter months when no other food is available.
Water is collected and used to dilute the nectar with which the larvae are fed.
Swarming
When the size of the colony reaches a certain stage and the
nectar flow is at its greatest, the queen and a great many workers, leave the
hive in a swarm. The swarm comes to rest in a great cluster on a tree branch or
similar situation. Scout bees, who may have left the hive some days before,
seek out a suitable situation for a new nest and return to the swarm and
communicate this information, whereupon the whole swarm moves off to the new
site. In the old hive, one of the new queens hatches out, mates, and takes over
the colony that is left.
Senses
and communication
As socially organised colonies become more complex the ‘power’, the control
method shifts form aggressive queen behaviour to the pheromone mediated
behaviour typical of honeybee queens. Reproductive control in honeybees is
based on inhibitory pheromones exchanged with and between the workers and the
developing larvae. 9-keto-deconoic acid is the main chemical pheromone ‘queen
substance’ used to both attract males and also to inhibit the building of royal
cells, (Queen Larvae).
The senses of touch and smell, particularly through the antennae, are
very important to bees in finding sources of food, in identifying members of
their own colony, and sometimes in finding their way home. Their compound eyes
are sensitive to certain groups of colours. In the darkness of the hive they
must depend on touch and smell to carry out their activities. They find their
way to and from the hive by learning the landmarks in the vicinity and steering
by the position of the sun.
A bee which has found a rich source of food will return to
the hive and execute a dance on the surface of the comb. It takes the form of a
figure eight with a straight section in the middle. The length of the straight
section is proportional to the distance of the flowers from the hive, and the
angle it makes with the vertical represents the angle between the position of
the sun, the hive and the source of food.
Honeybees ‘waggle’ dance.
Honeybees use a
combination of communication forms. There is chemical exchange of pheromones
but they also use touch and vibration as seen in the famous ‘waggle’ dance. In
addition, the dancer may make waggling movements of her body on the straight
section, which indicates distance. Some of the foraging bees in the hive follow
the dance, touching the dancer with their antennae. From time to time the
dancer stops and, regurgitating a little of the nectar she has collected from
the flowers, she feeds the attentive workers. The dance pattern, the taste of
the nectar and sometimes the scent of the flowers on the dancer's body enable
the workers to find the feeding ground from which the dancer has just returned.
Bee-keeping
Although humans cannot tame the honey bee they can exploit
its activities. A hive is provided which can be opened and examined without unduly
disturbing the colony. It is fitted with vertical wooden frames in which the
bees can build their combs. The frames have, wired into their centre, a sheet
of wax which is indented with a hexagonal pattern so that the workers build
their combs within the confines of the frame, and each comb can then be removed
separately. By means of a grid, through which the workers but not the queen can
pass, the queen is kept in the lower section of the hive. As a result, the
combs in the upper sections will contain no grubs but only pollen and nectar.
It is from these "supers" that the honey is eventually removed by the
bee-keeper. In the autumn and spring the bees are given sugar solution to
compensate them for the honey taken from their winter store.
In addition to their value as honey producers, the part
played by bees in pollination is very important. In apple orchards and clover
fields, for example, the yields have been greatly increased by keeping a hive
of bees in the locality. Efficient pollination leads to complete fertilization
of all the ovules in an ovary, which subsequently develops into a perfect
fruit. There are firms which hire out hives of bees to farmers and fruit
growers during the flowering period of their crops.
Bees' Sugar is Unique
While the bees play a critical role as pollinators for many
agricultural crops in maintaining a balanced eco-system, they also have one
very important work - yielding a sweet sticky liquid that man can eat for
health. The healthful substances in the bee food may be minute in quantity, but
when consumed regularly will bring about a powerful accumulative effect in
health.
The healing benefits of the golden liquid, how it has cured
so many ailment including cough, sinus, eczema, infections, arthritis, pains,
burns, cuts, and even brought new precious understanding to those who are
obese, trying to lose pounds, have high blood pressure, cholesterol issues and
diabetes. Honey is considered superior to all other forms of sugar or sweetener.
Some of its health benefits are.
1. Honey is nature's energy booster
2. Honey is a great immunity system builder
3. Honey is a natural remedy for many ailments
Honey is a natural sweetener. It contains 22 amino acids and
a variety of minerals essential for its metabolism and hence is helpful in
preventing obesity. It is believed that drinking lemon juice with a little
honey the first thing in the morning is an effective anti cellulite treatment
as it helps to increase body metabolism. A person who is determined to shed
weight and speed up sluggish metabolism may try honey and lemon diet tip.
Another very popular recipe associated with honey and weight
loss is a drink that uses honey and cinnamon as ingredients. Many people have
found this remedy very effective in losing weight. The steps are easy: Dissolve
half a teaspoon of cinnamon powder (or ground cinnamon) in a cup of boiling
water. Stir the mixture and cover for half an hour. Filter away any big particles
and add a teaspoon of honey. Take it in the morning with an empty stomach about
half an hour before breakfast.
For people who tend to overeat or feel discomfort in the
stomach after meals, honey can be taken for better digestion.
The latest theory based on the hibernation diet also builds
a link between fructose-rich honey and weight loss. It suggests taking a
generous spoonful or two of honey at night, either as a warm drink or straight
from the jar, and promises to help us sleep and lose weight at the same time by
fuelling the liver, speeding up fat-burning metabolism and easing stress
hormones.
Did you know?
Worker honey bees
sting only once, then die.
A honeybee colony
can have between 20,000 and 80, 000 bees
Only female bees
have a stinger.
