Bees (Apoidea superfamily) are flying insects, closely related to
wasps and ants. They are adapted for feeding on nectar,
and play an important role in pollinating flowering plants, and are called pollinators. Bees
have a long tongue that they use in order to obtain the nectar from flowers. Bees have antennae made up of thirteen segments in
males and twelve in females. They have two pairs of wings, the back pair being the smaller of the two. Their legs are modified so
that they can gather pollen and the apex of their abdomens are modified into a stinger.
There are over 16,000 described species, and possibly around 30,000 species in total. Bees may be solitary, or may live in
various sorts of communities. The most advanced of these are eusocial colonies,
found among the honeybees and stingless bees. Sociality is believed to
have evolved separately in different groups of bees.
Eusocial bees
Eusocial bees live in large hives, each of which has a single queen, together with workers
and drones.
The life cycle of bumblebees begins in the spring when the queen bee rises
from hibernation. At this time the queen bee is the one who does all the work because there are no worker bees to do the work
yet. She searches for a place to build her nest and she builds the honeypots. She also does the foraging to collect nectar and pollen. Bumblebee colonies die off in the
autumn, after raising a last generation of queens, which survive individually in found hiding spots. Interestingly bumblebee
queens sometimes seek winter safety in honeybee hives, where they are sometimes found dead in the spring by beekeepers, presumably stung to death by the honeybees. It is not known whether any
succeed in winter survival in such an environment.
With honeybees, which survive winter as a colony, the queen begins egg laying in winter, to prepare for spring. This is
probably triggered by day length. She is the only fertile female, and deposits all the
eggs from which the other bees are produced. Except for her one
mating flight or to establish a new colony, the queen rarely leaves the hive after the
larvae have become full grown bees. The queen deposits each egg in a cell prepared by the
worker bees. The egg hatches into a small larva which is fed by nurse bees (worker bees who maintain the interior of the
colony). After about a week (depending on species), the larva is sealed up in its
cell by the nurse bees. After another week (again, depending on species), it will emerge an adult bee.
The larvae and pupae in a frame of honeycomb are referred to as frames of brood and are often sold (with adhering bees) by beekeepers to other
beekeepers to start new beehives.
Both workers and queens are fed royal jelly during the first three
days of the larval stage. Then workers are switched to a diet of pollen and nectar or diluted honey, while those intended for
queens will continue to receive royal jelly. This causes the larva to develop to the pupa stage more quickly, while being also
larger and fully developed sexually. Queen breeders consider good nutrition during the larval stage to be of critical importance
to the quality of the queens raised, good genetics and sufficient number of matings
also being factors. During the larval and pupal stages, various parasites can attack the pupa/larva and destroy or mutate it.
Queens are not raised in typical horizontal brood cells of the honeycomb. They
are specially constructed to be much larger, and have a vertical orientation. As the queen finishes her larval feeding, and
pupates, she moves into a head downward position, from which she will later chew her way out of the cell. At pupation the workers
cap or seal the cell. Just prior to emerging from their cells, young queens can often be heard "piping." This is considered
likely to be a challenge to other queens for battle.
Worker bees are infertile females. Worker bees secrete the wax used to build the
hive, clean and maintain the hive, raise the young, guard the hive and forage for nectar and pollen. In honeybees, the worker
bees have a modified ovipositor called a stinger with which they can sting to defend the hive, but the bee will die soon after.
Drone bees are the male bees of the colony. Drone honeybees do not forage for nectar or
pollen. The primary purpose of a drone bee is to fertilize a new queen.
Drones mate with the queen in flight. They die immediately after mating.
In some species, drones are suspected of playing a contributing role in the temperature regulation of the hive. Drone bees
have no stinger, since a stinger is actually a modified ovipositor.
Queens live for an average of three years, while workers have an average life of only three months.
Honeybee queens release pheromones to regulate hive activities, and worker
bees also produce pheromones for various communications.
Honey is produced from nectar collected from flowers, which is a clear liquid consisting of nearly 80% water with complex sugars. The collecting bees store the
nectar in a second stomach and return to the hive where worker bees remove the
nectar. The worker bees digest the raw nectar for about 30 minutes using enzymes to
break up the complex sugars into simpler ones. Raw honey is then spread out to dry, which reduces the water content to less than
20%. Once dried, each honeycomb is sealed with wax to preserve the honey.
Honey itself is so sweet that bacteria cannot grow on it, and dry enough that
it does not support yeasts. Anaerobic bacteria may be present and survive in spore form, in honey, as well as anywhere else in
common environments. Honey (or any other sweetener) which is diluted by the non-acidic digestive fluids of infants, can provide
an ideal medium for the transition of botulism bacteria from the spore form to the
actively growing form, which produces a toxin. When infants are weaned to solid foods, their digestive system becomes acid enough
to prevent such growth and poisoning. No sweeteners should be given to infants prior to weaning, as there is a small, but
possibly lethal risk of poisoning.
Honey bee pheromones
Honey Bees use special pheromones, or chemical
communication, for almost all behaviors of life. Such uses include (but are not limited to): mating, alarm, defense, orientation, kin and colony recognition, food production, and integration of colony
activities. Pheromones are thus essential to honey bees for their survival.
Solitary, communal, and quasisocial Bees
Some other bees form small colonies. For example, most species of bumblebee
(Bombus terrestris, B. pratorum, et al.) live in colonies of 30-400 bees. (By contrast, an average honeybee hive at
the height of summer will have 40,000 - 80,000 bees.) The queen bee is typically able to survive on her own for at least a short
time (unlike queens in eusocial species who must be cared for at all times).
Other species of bee such as the Orchard Mason bee (Osmia lignaria) and the hornfaced bee (Osmia cornifrons) are solitary in that every
female is fertile. There are no worker bees for these species. Solitary bees typically produce neither honey nor beeswax. They are immune from tracheal and varroa mites, but have their own unique parasites,
pests and diseases. (see diseases of the
honeybee)
Kleptoparasitic bees
Cuckoo bees are bumblebee look-alikes that invade bumblebee nests and lay their eggs. The bumblebees raise the young as
their own. Megachilid bees also have other megachilid Coelioxys bees
whose young are placed into the already provisioned nests of these solitary bees. They destroy the host larvae and eat the
food.
Communication
- "The general story of the communication of the distance, the situation, and the direction of a food source by the dances of
the returning worker bee on the vertical comb of the hive, has been known in general outline from the work of Karl von Frisch in the middle 1950s." (World&I) (http://www.worldandi.com/subscribers/feature_detail.asp?num=24297)
Miscellaneous
All bees eat nectar and pollen. Bees are excellent pollinators and play an important role in agriculture.
Bees are the favorite meal of Merops apiaster, a bird.
  
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