The Beehive - It's a Woman's World!
The hive works as a collective, and is made up of worker bees, drones and a queen.
- up to 80,000 bees in each hive in summer. (Average 60,000)
The worker bees-
- Are female and do a lot of work.
- They only live for 6 weeks in the busy season.
- From birth they work in every job in the hive, from the inside gradually getting towards the door and then outside. Jobs include nursing, cleaning, feeding, wax building, heating/ventilation and guard duties. Then, after a few practice flights, its out collecting pollen and nectar.
Drones-
- Are male and don't do much!
- Their one and only job is to mate with virgin queens on their mating flights. They die in the act so its not all fun. The queen tears out their genitils to take back to the hive as proof she's mated.
- any drones left in Autumn get tossed out of the hive and left to die....It's a cruel world...
Queen Bee-
- Lives between 3 and 4 years (we tend to re-queen at 2 years old).
- Lays about 2000 eggs a day in the summer
- She only mates once in her lifetime, with up to a dozen drones and this then gives her enough sperm for the rest of her life.
- She is much bigger and more elegant than workers or drones.
- The queen and worker bees start off from exactly the same eggs, the only difference being that the worker is fed on regurgitated bee food, honey and pollen, while the queen was fed solely on royal jelly, which is produced from special glands in the heads of the workers.
