Home >> Science & Nature >> Insects & Science

Features of a Honey Bee

Honeybees "Apis mellifera" are a very important insect for the human, plant and animal kingdoms. The honeybee provides humans, animals, birds and plants with nourishing honey, beeswax and associated produce; it plays a critical role in sustaining crops and wild plants by pollinating them. The growing commercialization of bee products and the introduction of the beekeeping industry have led to renewed interest in the honeybee. In fact, this insect has several interesting features that make it fascinating to study.

Colony
- Honeybees live and work in a colony or hive that is inhabited by around 20,000 bees during summer, while domestic hives can contain more than 80,000 bees. These bees are social insects; the beehive is categorized into three different castes or groups that comprise of a fertile female bee, the queen; a few hundred fertile male bees called drones; and a thousand sterile female bees known as workers.
  
  The sole job of the queen honeybee is to lay eggs and reproduce; the drones exist to mate with the queen, while the workers perform a majority of the communal functions within the hive. The worker bees construct and protect the hive, regulate the temperature, circulate air within the hive by beating their wings, rear the young, and attend to the needs of the queen and drones.
Stinger
- The honeybee's stinger is a sharp-pointed shaft that ejects venom and is similar in structure to its egg-laying organ. Drones do not possess a stinger; only female bees are equipped with a stinger, which is located in the sting chamber at the base of the abdomen. Around 1/8-inch long, the stinger of the queen bee is curved, smooth with small and few barbs, and much longer compared to the worker bee. In contrast, the worker bee possesses stingers that are well-barbed, straight and cause instant death to bees if they are stung.
  
  According to the University of Arizona Website, when a worker bee stings a mammal, the stinger embeds itself into the wound and continuously pumps venom in it. Honeybees can sting only once, as the barbs on the stingers are attached to the worker's intestines; they get detached from the stinging bee's body when a victim is attacked.
Wax Glands
- The honeybee creates the honeycomb, an engineering feat comprising of hexagonal cells of flat, vertical panels with the help of wax, which it secretes from the abdominal glands. When the worker bee is between 12 and 15 days old, the glands on the underside of its abdomen produce liquid wax, states the Great Plains Nature Center Website. This wax is transported and molded by the house bee into the honeycomb, and gradually solidifies to form the walls of the honeycomb cells. Once the worker bee passes through the wax producing phase, the wax glands degenerate and transform into a flat layer of cells.

Insects & Science