Honey Bee Life Cycle

Introduction

Honey bees are a eusocial flying insect species that belong to the bee family and is indigenous to Afro-Eurasia. One of the many types of bees that make honey is the honey bee, Apis mellifera. Only bees from the Apini tribe, belonging to the Apis genus, are considered as true honey bees. The average honey bee colony/hive contains 50,000 bees which consist of queens, drones, and workers. An estimated one-third of all the food crops we eat are pollinated by honey bees.

Honey bee characteristics are −

• The stinger, legs, antenna, three segments of the thorax covered with hair, and six discernible segments of the abdomen make up the honeybee's segmented body.

• They have an orange and yellow ring around their abdomen and are red and brown in hue.

• A pollen basket is present on their back legs.

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Types of Honey Bees

A honey bee hive contains three separate species of bees − the queen, worker, and drone.

• Queen Bee − Queens are the largest bees, perform a variety of crucial tasks and produce as many as 200,000 eggs in a good year. They have small wings and a smooth, extended abdomen and grow up in specially designed cells. The larva of a future queen bee is chosen by worker bees and is fed with royal jelly. They produce pheromones, which coordinate and regulate the actions in her colony.

• Worker Bee − They are the smallest, infertile females and the most prevalent bees that work to feed and maintain the colony's health. Mature adult workers do chores like cleaning and capping cells. Older worker bees are responsible for taking care of food supplies, the queen, developing broods, and drawing out new comb.

• Drone Bees − The laziest bees are the male bees, born from an unfertilized egg. Their only job is reproduction and they appear larger than workers in size. All that the drone does is mate with the queen 7 to 10 times during a mating flight.

Varieties of Honey Bees

There are almost 20,000 different species of bees, but only eight of them are recognised as honey bees. These species include −

• European/western honey bee (Apis Mellifera) − Popular species of honey bee that aids in the world's food production by its higher pollination capacity. Inhabitants of Africa, Asia and Europe.

• Black dwarf honey bee (Apis andreniformis) − Lives in Southeast Asia. Clusters of darker species grow in tiny trees or shrubs.

• Eastern/Asian honey bee (Apis cerana) − Smaller than European honey bee. It is indigenous to Southeast Asia and can be found in China, India, Japan, Malaysia, etc.

• Giant honey bee (Apis dorsata) − They are huge, measuring between 17 and 20 mm. Occupies tropical and subtropical areas and shows hostile intraspecific behaviour.

• Red dwarf honey bee (Apis florea) − Asian origin, found in southeast China, Vietnam, Africa and the Middle east.

• Koschevnikov’s honey bee (Apis koschevnikovi) − An endangered species found in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Borneo. To survive in wet and humid environments, they used to establish tiny colonies.

• Himalayan giant honey bee (Apis laboriosa) − It is a subspecies of Apis dorsata.

• Philippine honey bee (Apis Nigrocincta) − Measures between 5.5 and 5.9 mm, this species is found only in the Philippines and Indonesia. They build their nests in crevices or buildings made by humans.

Life Cycle of Honey Bee

Honey bee life cycle has 4 stages − Egg, larva, pupa and, the adult stage.

Stage 1 - Egg − At the beginning of the life cycle, the queen lays eggs in comb cells, almost the size of a rice grain. The queen lays both fertile and unfertile eggs and can lay up to 3000 eggs per day. Unfertilized eggs develop into male drones, whilst fertilized eggs will either mature into female workers or become queens. After 3 days the eggshell dissolves and the bee larva is formed.

Stage 2 - Larva − They are white, blind, with no legs, and resemble small grubs. For the first 3 days, they are fed with royal jelly. After that, larvae get differentiated into queens and workers. Skin is repeatedly lost from the 14-16th day, after that the hive is closed with beeswax, where the larvae to pupal transition take place.

Stage 3 - Pupa − Larvae to pupa transition occurs within the wax-covered cells. More of a bee-like form is attained with fine body hair and features like eyes, legs, and wings as the pupa continues to develop.

Stage 4 - Adult − The adult bee eventually gnaws out of the capped cell at the right time. As the bees leave the cell, workers tidy up the cell and get it ready for the next cycle.

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Apiculture and its Products

• Apiculture or beekeeping, is the growing and management of honeybees for commercial honey production and obtaining other beehive products.

• An apiarist/beekeeper is the person in charge of raising bees to sell to other apiarists and gathering flower pollen, bee pollen, honey, and beeswax to fertilise crops.

• In addition to honey, beekeeping gives us access to beeswax that has great economic worth, which is used as a cheese coating, food ingredient, cosmetics, medicine, candle production, polishes, etc.

Significance

• Commercially useful goods like honey, beeswax, and jelly are produced by apiculture that is in high demand on the international market.

• Honeybees carry out pollination, which helps to increase crop production and maintain the aesthetic appeal of gardens.

• Recent studies have demonstrated that the venom of honeybees contains a combination of proteins that can kill the AIDS virus.

Conclusion

Honey bees are essential for pollinating both wild and domesticated plants, which has significant effect on both our food supply and the economy as well as on ecosystem. Beekeepers nurture honey bees and use them to pollinate crops as well as harvest the delicious honey they produce. Honey bees pollinate around one-third of all the food crops people eat which makes it a crucial factor to protect them to maintain the ecosystem's equilibrium.

FAQs

Q.1. What is the royal jelly?

Ans. Royal jelly is a milky-white secretion which is of high nutritional content, made by the worker honeybee glands and fed to larvae and queen bees for their development.

Q.2. What is a bee swarm?

Ans. When a hive becomes overpopulated or congested, some of the bees depart the hive with the old queen and build a new hive, while a new queen takes control.

Q.3. Briefly describe the honeycomb's structure.

Ans. Honeycomb/hive are two-layered hexagonal structures made up of a succession of combs or cells and are the primary source of sustenance for the eggs deposited inside the cells.

Q.4. How do honey bees communicate?

Ans. Communication is dependent on chemical signals, mainly aroma and taste and each hive have a distinct chemical signal that its members use to identify one another.

Q.5. How is apiculture done in general?

Ans. Apiaries (spaces where numerous beehives can be positioned) are used to commercially breed bees. The bees are handled and nurtured in apiaries to create wax and honey.