Honey Bees | The Tasmanian Honey Company

Each honeybee colony is made up of around 95% workers, 5% drones and 1 Queen.

Honey bees, like ants, termites and some wasps are social insects. Unlike ants and wasps, bees are vegetarians; their protein comes from pollen and their carbohydrate comes from honey which they make from nectar.

Honey Bees make combs of waxen cells placed side by side that provide spaces to rear young and to store honey. The bee colony lives on the stored honey throughout winters and therefore can subsist for years.

Life cycle of a honeybee

WORKER BEES

The worker bee truly embodies its name by being the most industrious member of the colony. Their rols within the hive vary based on their age.

A colony may have 20,000 to 100,000 workers. The life span of a worker bee depends upon the time of year and amount of work done. It is generally accepted that an individual worker has the ability to log 800km and will collect 5ml (or one teaspoon) of honey over her life span. Depending on their age, they have many different roles in the hive.

Young female worker bees serve as Nurse bees. When foraging bees come back to the hive, they transfer their collected nectar to a nurse bee, who then transforms it into honey for storage. Key responsibilities include feeding larvae, filling and sealing cells, nourishing the queen, and providing sustenance for drones.

Older bees are Foragers, collecting important resources from flowers including pollen, nectar and propolis that are essential for a strong and surviving hive.

Numerous additional roles are fulfilled by worker bees, including:

Pollen packers: bees store pollen into cells, mixed with a little honey to produce “bee bread” that is fed to larvae.

Honeycomb builders: Using their wax glands, these workers will continue to produce beeswax so they can build the hexagon structure that serves the dual purpose of providing space for young bees and for storing honey and pollen. Bees have evolved with the hexagon since the dawn of time as it distributes weight evenly across it’s sides, proving to be the strongest and most efficient shape. Read more about the formation of beeswax here.

Honey sealers: before filling the honeycomb cells with honey these hive workers will break down the water content that turns nectar into honey. Each cell is then capped with wax that has been produced from their wax glans in the abdomen.

Water carriers & Fanners: Water carriers will spray water into the hive directed at the fanning bees. The airflow created by their fanning over the water promotes evaporation, serving as a natural cooling mechanism. The hive needs to maintain a temperature between 33-36 degrees Celcius otherwise the wax foundation will get too hot and possibly collapse. Workers can fan their wings over 200 times per second!

Now we know why they are named Workers!

Only the female honeybee has a stinger; this is her defence against intruders and threats to the hive. Stinging tough human skin will generally result in her death as her organs will be ripped out with her stinger once she disconnects and left in the skin.

QUEEN

A young queen will embark on her initial nuptial flight, mating with approximately 15 to 20 drones. During this process, she gathers millions of sperm, which she stores in her spermathecal duct.

While she may need to undertake several mating flights, once she has collected sufficient sperm to last her entire life, the queen will return to the hive. There, she will lay up to 2,000 eggs daily during the peak of the season.

The queen has the ability to determine the gender of her offspring as they exit her ovaries; some will come into contact with her spermathecal duct, leading to fertilization. If an egg id fertilized, it develops into a female, known as either a worker bee or a potential queen. Conversely, an unfertilized egg becomes male, referred to as a drone.

As the queen approaches the end of her life, she will lay eggs sporadically, signalling the hive to prepare for the emergence of a new queen.

Nurse bees can secrete a substance from their glands called, Royal Jelly. For the first 1-3 days post-laying, the eggs are fed this royal jelly, after which their diet shifts to “bee bread”, a mixture of pollen and honey. The larvae selected to become the next queen will continue to receive only royal jelly, which triggers queen morphology development, including the fully developed ovaries becessary for egg-laying.

When multiple queen cells are prepared by the hive, it becomes a race to be the first to hatch. Once the first queen emerges, she will eliminate potential rivals by stinging and killing other queen cells before they have a chance to hatch. There can only be one ruler!!

Approximately five days after emerging from her cell, the virgin queen will embark on her first nuptial flight. Only after mating with a drone will she be officially recognized as the Queen of the hive.

A queen can live for up to 4 to 5 years. In contrast, worker bees typically only survive for about 6 weeks.

DRONES

Drones are the sole males in a hive, and their main role is to mate with the queen. They do not collect nectar or pollen, nor do they produce honey; instead, they depend on their female counterparts for sustenance.

Lacking a stinger, drones are known to buzz around intruders to confuse them when the hive is disturbed. Some may view drones as lazy and somewhat bothersome, but they play an essential role in the colony’s genetic diversity.

During her limited mating flights, the queen mates with drones from different colonies. This practice enhances the genetic pool, which typically leads to positive outcomes, such as improved disease resistance. The greater the genetic diversity of the sperm collected by the queen, the higher the chance of the colony’s survival.

After mating with a queen, a drone usually does not survive. His fate is similar to that of a female bee after stinging; the drone’s organs are also torn away when seperated from the queen.

As autumn approaches, any remaining drones are expelled from the hive by their sisters, who recognize that they do not contribute to the colony and become an additional burden when pollen and nectar are scarce. Workers will cease to feed the drones, and if the drones haven’t starved to death, they will be dragged to the hive’s entrance, where the workers will begin to bite off their wings and legs before tossing them out, leading to their eventual demise from hypothermia.

While this may seem harsh, it is a necessary process for maintaing a healthy and thriving colony throughout the winter.

Fun Fact: A drones lifespan is typically around just 90 days!