The Honeybee

The most important bee, in an economic sense, is the honeybee. Its honey is used as a sweetener in syrups, candies, medicines, and pastries. The beeswax produced by the honeybee is used to make candles, floor waxes, lipsticks, polishes, and ointments.

The honeybee is also important because it pollinates crops. Many farmers and fruit growers rent hives of honeybees during the flowering season to improve pollination.

The honeybee colony, unlike that of most bees, lasts through the winter. The bees live on honey stored during summer. In the winter, the bees form a tight cluster around the eggs to keep them warm.

Honeybees are subject to a disease called foulbrood, caused by spore-forming bacteria. It can be controlled by the use of antibiotics.

Honeybees are not native to North America, but were imported from Europe in the 17th century. The Italian honeybee, a gentle bee originally from Italy, is the most widely raised variety in the United States. Other varieties include the Caucasian from the Caucasus Mountains, the Carniolan from Austria, and the German.

In 1956, an African variety of honeybee was introduced into Brazil to bolster that country's honey production. The African honeybees spread and crossbred with established European varieties. The result was a bee popularly called the "killer bee" because of its aggressive nature; such bees are quicker to attack than other bees and attack in very large numbers. "Killer bees" crossbreed with European varieties, producing aggressive offspring. "Killer bees" have expanded their range northward, reaching Mexico in 1986 and the United States in 1990.

The queen is slightly longer than the other bees. She has a smooth, curved stinger used only in battles with rival queens. A queen sometimes lives four or five years, during which all her time is devoted to producing eggs. In summer she lays about one egg a minute.

A drone emerges from its brood cell 24 days after the egg is laid. Drones are shorter than the queen but are more robust. They have no stingers and do no work. After the mating season, they are usually driven from the nest or killed by the workers.

Worker bees live only six weeks to two months. However, those born in the late fall may live through the winter, because they are free from the heavy burden of gathering nectar and pollen.

Workers collect beeswax secreted by their bodies and from it build small six-sided cells for storing honey and pollen and to serve as brood cells for eggs, larvae, and pupae. These cells are joined together to form the honeycomb. Brood cells for male eggs are larger than those for worker eggs. A cell for a young queen is larger still, made by tearing down the walls of several adjoining cells.

A worker's metamorphosis is completed in about 21 days. A young worker's first duties are to remove waste from the cells and to feed larvae still developing in other cells. Later, the worker guards the entrance of the hive and circulates the air inside by fanning its wings. After two or three weeks, the worker begins gathering nectar and pollen. It is estimated that a group of bees makes 20,000 to 40,000 separate trips in collecting enough nectar for one pound (454 g) of honey. In a year, a single colony may produce as much as 500 pounds (227 kg) of honey.

Workers communicate with each other primarily by performing a dance inside the hive. The dance causes air movements, which other bees detect. By dancing in various patterns, a bee can inform the other workers of the direction and distance from the hive of a food source and indicate its richness.

Honey bees visit as many as 1,000 flowers a day. They use their long tongues to sip nectar from the flowers. They store this nectar in their honey stomachs. The honey stomach is a special organ that breaks down the sugar in the nectar. When the bees return to the hive, they spit up the nectar. They give some of the nectar to other bees. The rest, they put into empty cells. That is where the nectar turns into sweet honey.

When a honey bee buzzes from flower to flower, it collects more than just nectar. Pollen sticks to its hairy body and hind legs. The bee brushes this pollen into “baskets,” or sacs, on its hind legs. Later, when the bee returns to the hive, it kicks off the pollen into cells in the hive. Honey bees use this pollen as food.

Honey bees dance to tell other bees where the food is. Some honey bee workers are scouts. They fly around looking for flowers full of nectar or pollen. When they find these flowers, they hurry to the hive with the news.

At the hive, honey bee scouts dance in a figure-eight pattern. As they dance, they make a line between the two loops of the figure eight. If the line points straight up the hive, then the flowers are located in the direction of the sun. A line pointing to the right means that the flowers are to the right of the sun. The line points left if the flowers are on the left of the sun. The faster the bees waggle their tails while they dance, the closer the flowers are.

Worker bees in the hive want to know all about the nectar that was found. They often tap the scout bees to signal for a sample. The scout bee then spits up some of the nectar for the worker bees to taste. If the worker bees like the sample, they all fly off to the flowers.

When a hive becomes overcrowded, the workers develop a new queen by providing a female larva with a diet of royal jelly. A queen matures in about 16 days. If several new queens mature at the same time, they battle among themselves with their stingers until only one remains alive.

The new queen then begins her mating flight. She leaves the hive and attracts drones by secreting a pheromone, a hormone with a distinct odor. The queen outdistances all but the strongest drone, who becomes her mate while in flight. The drone dies immediately, and the queen returns to her hive to begin laying eggs, surrounded by worker bees who watch over her and feed her.

When a new queen develops, the old queen, accompanied by about half the workers, leaves the hive to start a new colony. The bees fly in a dense formation, called a swarm, centering about the queen.

As soon as the swarm enters the new hive, food is gathered and a new honeycomb is built. The workers secrete wax from glands on their abdomens and mold it with their mouths and feet to form combs. The queen deposits her eggs in these combs.