Habits of the North American Honeybee

Breeding

• Young bees go through four stages: egg, larva, pupa and adult. For most bees, the adult phase of life lasts only a few weeks, except for those that become queens. Queen bees, once they have mated, can lay more than 1,500 eggs per day. If a colony becomes overcrowded, the queen will typically take about half of the worker bees and form a new colony. This may also happen in some cases where a queen begins to fail and lose the enzymes that establish her as the queen. However, in most cases the old queen is killed and replaced.

Casts

• All bees are born into one of three casts. There are the queens, or potential queens, that are the rarest. Although a few hives have been found with two queens, this is extremely rare. Typically, a hive only has one surviving queen. Drones are the only males in the hive. Drones have no stinger and exist only to mate with a new queen. Once they have fulfilled their purpose the drones will typically be driven out of the hive to die. Worker bees are sterile females and make up the vast majority of the hive's population.

Colonies

• A healthy bee colony in the wild may have up to 20,000 members at the height of summer. Domesticated colonies may have up to 80,000 members, nearly all of these are workers. The young worker bees spend the first days of their adult lives cleaning the hive and feeding the larvae. They then spend the next stage of their lives collecting nectar and pollen from the older workers coming in from the fields. After about 20 days, the workers leave the hive to forage, which is the primary role of the workers.

Pollinating

• In the field, worker bees gather nectar from flowers. Many North American plants, especially agricultural plants, are dependent on this activity. When the bees land to gather nectar, the sticky pollen from the flowers collects on the legs of the bees. When the bees travel to the next flower some of the pollen falls off. As long as the pollen is from the same type of plant, pollination occurs. This pollination is what allows the flowers to produce viable fruit and vegetables.