The Bee Biology Fast Facts for Today!
Leave a commentJuly 25, 2017 by KathyMay
When you attend the 2017 Philadelphia Honey Festival on September 7, 9, or 10 – you will have a wonderful opportunity to meet some of the inhabitants of a honey bee hive. At that time of year, a healthy hive is preparing for winter. Their population can be upwards of 50,000 bees! Almost all those bees will be female – or workers. Only a handful – maybe 500-1000 will be male bees or drones. And of course, there is only ONE queen. (You may not see her.) Photo: @addisongearyphoto
Here are your Bee Biology Fast Facts for Today!
THE QUEEN:
* Will live normally between 1 and 4 years.
* Consumes royal jelly provided by the workers
* Has a non-barbed stinger
* Without a queen, the colony will eventually die
* Develops in 16 days, from egg to emergence from the queen cell
THE WORKERS:
* Worker are all females.
* Can number between 40-60,000 in a strong hive.
* Performs a multitude of tasks to include: Tending to the queen, feeding larvae, feeding
drones, nectar ripening, producing heat, collecting water, house cleaning guard duty,
field collection of pollen and nectar, to list a few.
* Will die if she stings. Has a barbed stinger that if left behind after stinging.
* Will live 6-8 weeks in the summer, working until her wings give out.
* Will live 4-6 months in winter when not actively working/foraging.
* Develops in 21 days from egg to emergence.
THE DRONES:
* Sole responsibility is fertilization.
* Leaves hive for 2-3 hours each day.
* Has no stinger
* If the workers stopped feeding them, they would die of starvation.
* Develops in 24 days from egg to hatching to emergence.