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Intermediate Beekeeping -- Lesson Thirteen --More Bee Biology -- Intermediate BeekeepingBiology of the honey bee Apis mellifera L.
As a member of the order Hymenoptera, the honey bee is related to wasps, and ants but is classified in the superfamily Apoidea. Apoidea have some interesting characteristic which separate them from other Hymenoptera such as yellow jackets which are sometimes mistaken for honey bees. These are: (the following applies to all bees but I am using honey bee in the description below.)
According to Theodore B. Mitchell who spent 38 years of his life studying bees "Bees are essential to our economy, being the chief pollinating agents of the flowering plants. They have a relation not only to agriculture, but to the conservation of wildlife and game management, and constitute an important element in the various ecologic factors that combine to form our environment. Thus the production of fruit crops such as apples, pears, melons, cucumbers, grapes, dewberries, huckleberries and strawberries, as well as cotton and various seed crops such as alfalfa, several clovers, vetch, onion, asparagus, buckwheat and celery, are dependent upon a sufficient population of bees, either the domesticated honey bee or some of our native, wild, solitary or social species." Lets realize that there are over 700 species of native bees in the eastern United States alone and Dr. Dewey M. Caron, in his book Honey Bee Biology and Beekeeping, indicates that "perhaps 4,000 are found in America north of Mexico." Apis mellifera L. is not a native bee. It was introduced by Europeans as this hemisphere was being settled and was called the "White man's fly" by the native Indians. Most Apis mellifera L. in what is now the United States were called German black bees but that began to change with the introduction of Italian bees into the United States in the 1860's. Most of the honey bees seen on flowering plants today are golden banded bees and thus are commonly mistaken when yellow jackets invade fairgrounds, back yard picnics, and pop cans to get the sweet sugars and get blamed for the bad manners of the yellow jacket. Honey bees do sting. Yellow jackets and hornets sting. But the poor honey bee dies as a result of its sting. If stung by a honey bee one will find a stinger with the poison sack still attached at the site of the sting. If stung by a Yellow jacket or hornet, you will find no stinger -- only a small reddish dot surrounded by a white welt that begins to swell and hurt--all stings hurt. It is not the purpose of this web page to give you a detailed description of the biology of the honey bee. We will however, attempt to give a general overview and if you need more, we suggest the following books: Honey Bee Biology and Beekeeping by Dewey M. Caron published by Wicwas Press The Hive and the Honey Bee Edited by Joe E. Graham published by Dadant & Sons. Honey bees are social insects. They benefit mankind by being crop pollinators, producers of honey, wax, propolis, and pollen. Honey bees live in a colony of many individuals whose joint effort is required for survival. Within this colony of bees are both females and males. The males are called drones and are necessary for mating with the queen. They gather no nectar or pollen for the hive. They also have no stinger. There may be 300 to 500 of these in a strong hive. Each colony will have a queen. She is the mother of all the bees in the colony. The queen is a female as are her daughters the worker bee. Both the queen and workers have stingers but only the worker bee is usually associated with stinging. I have handled thousands of queen bees and have yet to be stung by one. The queen uses her stinger to kill rival queens. Queens can lay unfertilized eggs or fertilized eggs. The drone comes from an unfertilized egg. Thus it does not have a father. This may seem strange to you but it does have a grandfather. The queen also lays fertilized eggs which result in all female offspring. Most often the fertilized eggs become worker bees but on occasion the bees may feed a fertilized egg with a special diet of royal jelly and produce a queen bee. Queens leave the hive on several occasions during their life. One is to mate with drones (estimates are 12 to 20 drones) and the other is to swarm from the hive. A queen that does not mate becomes a drone layer and produces only drone bees. A colony with a drone layer will not last very long because the production of worker bees is required for a hive to gather nectar and pollen. Neither the queen or drones are equipped to collect nectar or pollen. A colony of bees naturally swarm in the spring of the year. This is the way they have been able to increase the population of bee colonies over the millions of years they have existed. Honey bees have developed a highly structured existence. The worker bee lives just a short period of time. The time reported in many text indicate a life span of only 40 days once they emerge from the cell. During those 40 days the worker bee will be engaged in a number of task within the colony and spend the last 20 days or so, gathering nectar, water, propolis, and pollen depending on the colonies needs. Honey bees emerging in the fall may live thru the winter into spring. Honey bees do not hibernate as bears do. Honey bees eat the stored honey, maintain a core temperature in the cluster so that some activity is going on (Queens reduce egg laying in the fall and stop and then begin laying eggs again in January), and bees feed and nurse the young brood that will maintain the colony into the spring and prepare the hive for the mass build-up that comes in the spring. One should understand the development of the honey bee. There are three distinct types of cells within a colony of bees. By the way, honey bees build a nest from wax secreted by their wax glands. This nest is build vertical to the ground and in nature built in cavities of trees and between walls of houses, barns or sheds. They do not build their nest in the ground. Egg Larva Pupa Emerges Queen 3 days 4-5 days 8 days 16 days Worker 3 days 5-6 days 12-13 days 21 days Drone 3 days 6-7 days 14 days 24 days
The above diagram comes from the book Bees, Wasps & Ants by Rev. Charles A. Hall. Although not the best of pictures that could be shown, this picture does contain a number of details which show queen cells, drone cells, worker cells , cells with eggs and larva in them and queen cells with the queen emerging. For better pictures, check with a current text or one of the recommended text. A queen can lay between 1000 to 2,500 eggs a day and a colony may have as many as 60,000 to 80,000 bees in it. Is it a honey bee? Yellow jacket? or a Hornet? Any thing that stings is usually referred to as a honey bee. Such as, "I just got stung by a honey bee!" Many people do not really know what stung them. What follows will help you decide. First, if you are stung it helps if you place ice on the site of the sting. Or if you have them, swabs offered under the trade name "Sting-Kill" prove effective. This will help with the pain. Second, check for a stinger. If you find a stinger, then the insect that stung you is a honey bee. If you find a red spot with a white ring around it, and no stinger, then you most likely were stung by one of the commonly mistaken insects called honey bees. These insects look somewhat like a bee but differ in a number of respects. Check out the pictures below. Are these honey bees? Do they look like this? Or do they look like this? Often beekeepers get calls in the spring of the year concerning a swarm of honey bees. In the past many individuals got their start in beekeeping by catching a swarm. Picture number 3 in group 2 represents a typical swarm. Bee swarms have been known to settle on fence post, fire hydrants, automobiles, rural mailboxes, and on the side of houses. They often cause considerable alarm but bees in a new swarm are full of honey and are not as defensive as when in a hive. The honey bees are in group 2 above if you haven't already guessed it. The top group are yellow jackets and the last picture is a reproduction from the 1952 Insects The Yearbook of Agriculture. As the picture indicates, this is a hornet nest and often is mistaken for a honey bee nest. Compare this last picture with the center picture of group 2. Notice that the honey bees do not build a paper covering around their comb. Usually honey bees will seek a cavity to build a nest, but they sometimes will build a nest in an exposed spot like this picture. In the top set of pictures, notice that the nest is built in a structure protected from the weather. This is typical of honey bees and yellow jackets. Another important difference is that honey bees build their nest out of wax and it is built vertical to the ground. In both case with yellow jackets and hornets, their comb is build parallel with the ground with cells facing down rather than out to the side and their nest is made up of chewed fibers that are constructed into a protective paper covering up the actual comb which is also made up of a paper like substance. Now as far as stings are concerned, be aware that yellow jackets and hornets have a smooth stinger which can be used more than once. A single insect of either family (Yellow jackets or Hornets) can inflict several stings just moments apart. A honey bee can not use its stinger again following a stinging situation. The reason for this is that the stinger of a honey bee has barbs which remain attached to the stinging site and these barbs continue to work after the honey bee pulls free leaving its stinger behind. Of course the honey bee will die in a short time after it uses its stinger. Below is a picture taken with a scanning electron microscope of a honey bees stinger. Note the barbs which catch and hold in the victim. A honey bee stinger also has a venom sac attached and this continues to pump venom into the wound. It is important to scrape a bee stinger from the sting site rather than grabbing the venom sac and squeezing it to pull the stinger out. By grabbing the venom sac, you are only squeezing more venom into the wound. See the picture below:
They are the business end of the honey bee as far as most people are concerned. One should realize that some honey bees are aggressive and some are quite gentle. The Africanized honey bee has received a great deal of attention because of the violent nature of stinging incidents. The European honey bee which is raised by beekeepers in the United States is not the aggressive "killer bee" described in the press. However, a single bee sting can kill an individual if that individual is allergic to bee stings. A normal reaction is swelling around the sting site and pain and maybe some minor itching. If one reacts with extreme itching and breaks out in hives -- this is not normal! See a doctor immediately. Even more dangerous situations can occur. If breathing become labored, immediate attention is required or death may result. It is very important that you get help at an emergency room and those who know they have a problem will have a kit to inject themselves immediately after the sting. Common treatment consist of applying ice to the wound. Some would advise the use of Benadryl but you should read the warning label on the bottle or package before using it. It is an over the counter drug available at drug stores. Prepared by Dana Stahlman
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