How A Bee Hive Lives

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

For those who, in the world of rapidly developing technology, still have a living feeling of love for nature,

penetration into the life of bees will be a source of joy and inspiration."

Beekeeping is comparable to a hobby that turns into a constant human need to study the behavior of a honey bee, the use of various methods of its maintenance.

Honey bee (Apis mellifera)

The honey bee (Apis mellifera) belongs to the order of Hymenoptera, a family of stinging insects that live in families or communities. But, despite such a formidable weapon as a sting through which poison is injected into the victim, the bee is by nature a peace-loving creature, and if she is not disturbed, do not interfere with her work, she will never attack without reason. The development of a bee colony occurs cyclically, depending on the change of seasons. In the winter, when the plant world froze in anticipation of the spring awakening, the bees are in a relatively calm state, consuming a small amount of honey, maintain a positive temperature. The entire space where the family is located consists of hexagonal wax honeycomb cells, built by worker bees from material secreted by wax glands in the form of scales.

The entire volume of combs, incurred by a bee family, is usually called a bee's nest. Inside this space, occupied by bees and hidden from the outside world, all the processes associated with the development of the bee colony take place. Inside the nest, where the most favorable thermal regime is, the queen lays eggs, from which the larvae will emerge, and having pupated from them, they will come out into the light, or rather, young bees will appear in the dark. During the summer season, a family can rebuild several parallel combs and fill them with honey in order to successfully winter. There is a free space between the combs, through which the bee can freely move to the food reserves, it is usually 12.5 mm. It is called a street or interframe space.

When the outside air drops to subzero temperatures, the nest with bees shrinks in volume, becomes denser, acquiring the shape of a club. Thanks to this biological technique, the honey bee survives the harshest winters. A positive temperature is always maintained inside the club, the bees are constantly in motion, tightly pressed against each other. Consuming honey located above the club, bees give off their body heat to the club, while they move from the central part of the nest to the periphery and vice versa, and warm air, coming upstairs, warms the honey, which also acts as a heater. This behavior of the honey bee provided it with reliable protection from winter frosts and cold summers with minimal consumption of honey as a source of energy. Where the beekeeper did not provide the bees with a sufficient amount of food or it turned out to be of poor quality,disappointment awaits him, the family will die or, as the beekeepers say, crumble.

With the approach of spring, bees begin to consume more honey, the club loosens, and when the external temperature rises sharply, it will completely disintegrate. It happens that on warm February, March sunny days, bees fly out of the hive, make cleansing flights, freeing the intestines from feces. During this period, the temperature inside the nest may already be about + 350C, which serves as a signal for the uterus to start laying eggs in honeycomb cells. And the whole future fate of the bee family will now depend on the only full-fledged female - their queen. The rapid growth of the colony depends on its ability to lay eggs as much as possible in the cells prepared by the worker bees, as well as on the ability of the worker bees to maintain a constant temperature of + 350C.

After all, only strong families are able to fully prepare for the next winter test and thank the beekeeper with surplus in the form of marketable honey. During the period of intensive egg laying, young bees provide the queen with everything she needs. This environment is usually called the retinue of the uterus, which provides her with food around the clock, cleanses and protects her from all worries from other inhabitants of the family. With the onset of stable warm days, worker bees prepare more and more honeycomb cells suitable for laying eggs by the queen. A good young uterus can lay up to 2000 eggs per day, which corresponds to its own weight. This became possible thanks to the nutrition received by the queen from the worker bees, or rather, the result of the activity of the mandibular hypopharyngeal glands of the worker bees. And the bees themselves, which secrete royal jelly, actively consume honey and bee bread,as carbohydrate and protein feed.

After three days, a larva is formed from the laid eggs, which receives special nutrition and careful care. The initial nutrition of the larvae is royal jelly, which contains a lot of protein and fat, then gruel, consisting of bee bread and honey, is used in the diet. During the period of its development, the larva of a working bee grows 1500 times, and after the completion of this stage of development, it passes into the puppet stage, and the bees, having sealed the cell with an air-permeable wax cap, leave it alone. After going through several more stages of its development, after 21 days, gnawing through the wax cap, a young bee emerges, which is an underdeveloped female, which, depending on external conditions and its age, performs a certain job in the bee family. The lifespan of a worker bee strongly depends on the time of its appearance:autumn bees can live all winter and take part in honey collection, while spring and summer bees, performing intensive flights for nectar, wear out after 35 days, they die because of excessive wear of their wings. During the period of mass flowering of the first honey plants, with the appearance of an abundant amount of protein feed (flower pollen), bees begin to intensively build up honeycomb cells of a larger size than those from which worker bees emerge and in which honey and bee bread are stored. In these larger cells, the bee suite directs the queen to continue sowing with fresh eggs. During the period of mass flowering of the first honey plants, with the appearance of an abundant amount of protein food (flower pollen), bees begin to intensively build up honeycomb cells larger than those from which worker bees emerge and in which honey and bee bread are stored. In these larger cells, the bee suite directs the queen to continue sowing with fresh eggs. During the period of mass flowering of the first honey plants, with the appearance of an abundant amount of protein food (flower pollen), bees begin to intensively build up honeycomb cells larger than those from which worker bees emerge and in which honey and bee bread are stored. In these larger cells, the bee suite directs the queen to continue sowing with fresh eggs.

But unlike the usual clutch, the uterus begins to lay unusual eggs, unfertilized ones, of which a larger male, a drone, will appear in 24 days. Depending on the strength of the colony, which is determined by the number of streets that the bees hatch, and the amount of printed brood, each colony can breed from several hundred to several thousand drones. The appearance of drones in the family indicates the approach of the breeding period of bees, swarming - the division of the maternal family into two parts. The old fetal uterus, which the bees stop feeding with royal jelly, loses weight, stops laying eggs and becomes flighty. Swarming of the family occurs on a warm sunny day in the morning, but no later than 15 hours. A swarm that has flown out is usually grafted somewhere on the branches of garden trees, bushes, not far from the mother's family,gathering in a kind of bunch of many thousands of individuals and one uterus. But after a while, the swarm is removed from the original place, and all the bees fly away to the place where the scouts determined their place of residence for the new family.

Sometimes the family does not swarm, although the time is right, what is the reason?

One of the factors leading to this phenomenon may be an injury to the uterus, its excessive aging or abundant flow, then a quiet change of the uterus occurs. In any case, whether there is swarming or a quiet change of an unproductive queen, the worker bees pre-equip a wax cup that is much larger than the cell, in which the fertilized egg is located. The appeared larva literally floats in abundance of royal jelly, it is from it that a full-fledged female, an infertile young uterus, will emerge in 16 days. With the appearance of a young queen in the family, if the old one has not yet left the family with a swarm of bees, there is a struggle between them for the right to be the only mistress in this family. The more active, strong, dexterous young womb always wins, with her sting she kills her rival. In the presence of other mother liquors in the form of hanging plum-shaped growths,from which young queens can emerge, new swarms fly out with a certain sequence, and if a period of abundant flow begins, the swarming stops, and the worker bees destroy the remaining queen cells with their inhabitants.

As soon as the weather permits, the young queen leaves her family for a while, performing orientation on the terrain. After reconnaissance flights, she purposefully flies away from the family for a longer time and moves away to a distance of 3-4, and sometimes up to 7 km in anticipation of male individuals - drones. During these mating flights, the uterus mates with the drones, after which it returns to the hive and does not leave it, since, as it increases in weight, it loses its ability to fly. Now she will perform her main function - laying eggs. Drones, unlike bees, have a more delicate sense of smell, they are farsighted and can sense the queen bee 50 meters away and perfectly see it in flight. A very interesting discovery was made by the Russian biologist V. V. Shaking, provingthat mating of the uterus occurs with several drones in flight at a height of up to 30 meters from the ground. Removal of the queen for mating at such a distant distance indicates that the very nature of the existence of bees takes all the necessary measures to prevent closely related breeding.

During the swarm period, drones feel like welcome guests in the family. They eat food freely, and the bees do not pay attention to it. Possessing strong wings, drones can move up to 7 km from their nest and track young queens that have flown out for mating. The conducted observations have established that from year to year mating occurs in certain places where a large number of drones accumulate. Apparently, there is the most favorable habitat for mating flights. The further fate of the drones is very tragic. After a successful mating, which takes place on the fly, the drone dies, and those who failed to fulfill their mission return to the family. For some time, under the auspices of worker bees, they still receive heat and food. But this bliss does not last long. With the end of the swarming period, worker bees block the access to honey for the drones, and then completely drive them out, weakened by hunger, outside the nest. Although there is a sufficient amount of nectar in nature, drones, due to their shortened proboscis, cannot take advantage of the inaccessible abundance of food and are forced to die from hunger and cold.

As you can see, in order to prolong the life of a kind, nature freed the drones from all worries in the life of the family, they do not even have a sting for their own protection, but this carelessness costs them dearly, and the life of the drone is determined not by physical wear, like in a working bee, but their physiological necessity in the development of the bee colony.