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Bee family consists mainly of working bees. In winter a good family usually contains 20-30 thousands of them and in summer up to 60-80 thousand or more. All the worker bees in the family are sisters born from one queen bee. They, like the queen bee, are females, but, unlike the queen bee, genitals of worker bees are undeveloped.
Queen bees after laying the eggs no longer care about their offspring. Larvae emerging from the eggs are bred by worker bees. In this case, the nurse bees consume a lot of protein feed.
In case of the sudden death of queen bees and the absence of larvae in cells their food is consumed by nurse bees and that makes their ovaries develop (each with 3-5 egg tubules, rarely from 10-20). However, the worker bees can not mate with drones. They have no spermatheca to keep sperm. Therefore, unfertilized eggs of such bees give only drones. Bees with functioning ovaries are called laying worker bees. The colony with laying worker bees is doomed to gradual extinction, if the beekeeper will not help it in time.
Worker bees do all the work inside the hive and outside. They clean the nest, preparing cells of honeycombs before the queen bee lays eggs in them, secrete wax and build new cells, feed larvae, maintain the required temperature in the hive, guard the nest, gather nectar and pollen from the flowers of plants and bring them to the hive; so the worker bees perform all the work associated with the life of the bee colony.
Fertilized eggs that have just been laid by the queen bee in the cells are glued by the lower end to the bottom perpendicularly. Then, as the embryo develops, the eggs gradually descend. By the end of the third day they are on the bottom of cells. The position of eggs in the cell can signify the date when the queen laid them. By the end of the third day the nurse bees add a drop of jelly evolved by their glands to the egg. After that, the shell of the egg softens and the small larva hatches from it.
The first three days the larvae of worker bees get jelly (its composition is somewhat different from the jelly which the bees give to queen bees and larvae of future queens). The larvae of worker bees are growing fast, by the end of the third day their weight increases almost by 190 times. In the following days, these larvae are fed with a mixture of honey and bee bread.
After 6 days the larvae grow enough to occupy the entire volume of cells. By this time they no longer receive food, the bees seal the cell with porous caps of wax with an admixture of bee bread. In the sealed cell the larva spins a cocoon. It is formed from spinning gland secretions solidified in the form of threads, which surround the larva before pupation. Before spinning the cocoon the larva cleans its intestine laying its content into the corner of the cell.
Undergoing complex changes the larva becomes a pupa, the organs of larva decay (the process is called histolysis), and new organs of the future adult insect starts to develop. The pupa is white at first, then it darkens gradually. Within 12 days after the sealing of cells the pupa turns into a young adult bee. It gnaws through cap cells and goes out on the honeycomb.
The development of worker bees from laying of eggs to the adult insect lasts for 21 days, among them there are phases: eggs - 3 days, larvae in the open cell - 6 days, larvae and pupae in sealed cells - 12 days.
The eggs and larvae in open cells are called open brood and larvae and pupae in sealed cells - sealed brood.
Work bees
Bee family consists mainly of working bees. In winter a good family usually contains 20-30 thousands of them and in summer up to 60-80 thousand or more. All the worker bees in the family are sisters born from one queen bee. They, like the queen bee, are females, but, unlike the queen bee, genitals of worker bees are undeveloped.
Queen bees after laying the eggs no longer care about their offspring. Larvae emerging from the eggs are bred by worker bees. In this case, the nurse bees consume a lot of protein feed.
In case of the sudden death of queen bees and the absence of larvae in cells their food is consumed by nurse bees and that makes their ovaries develop (each with 3-5 egg tubules, rarely from 10-20). However, the worker bees can not mate with drones. They have no spermatheca to keep sperm. Therefore, unfertilized eggs of such bees give only drones. Bees with functioning ovaries are called laying worker bees. The colony with laying worker bees is doomed to gradual extinction, if the beekeeper will not help it in time.
Worker bees do all the work inside the hive and outside. They clean the nest, preparing cells of honeycombs before the queen bee lays eggs in them, secrete wax and build new cells, feed larvae, maintain the required temperature in the hive, guard the nest, gather nectar and pollen from the flowers of plants and bring them to the hive; so the worker bees perform all the work associated with the life of the bee colony.
Fertilized eggs that have just been laid by the queen bee in the cells are glued by the lower end to the bottom perpendicularly. Then, as the embryo develops, the eggs gradually descend. By the end of the third day they are on the bottom of cells. The position of eggs in the cell can signify the date when the queen laid them. By the end of the third day the nurse bees add a drop of jelly evolved by their glands to the egg. After that, the shell of the egg softens and the small larva hatches from it.
The first three days the larvae of worker bees get jelly (its composition is somewhat different from the jelly which the bees give to queen bees and larvae of future queens). The larvae of worker bees are growing fast, by the end of the third day their weight increases almost by 190 times. In the following days, these larvae are fed with a mixture of honey and bee bread.
After 6 days the larvae grow enough to occupy the entire volume of cells. By this time they no longer receive food, the bees seal the cell with porous caps of wax with an admixture of bee bread. In the sealed cell the larva spins a cocoon. It is formed from spinning gland secretions solidified in the form of threads, which surround the larva before pupation. Before spinning the cocoon the larva cleans its intestine laying its content into the corner of the cell.
Undergoing complex changes the larva becomes a pupa, the organs of larva decay (the process is called histolysis), and new organs of the future adult insect starts to develop. The pupa is white at first, then it darkens gradually. Within 12 days after the sealing of cells the pupa turns into a young adult bee. It gnaws through cap cells and goes out on the honeycomb.
The development of worker bees from laying of eggs to the adult insect lasts for 21 days, among them there are phases: eggs - 3 days, larvae in the open cell - 6 days, larvae and pupae in sealed cells - 12 days.
The eggs and larvae in open cells are called open brood and larvae and pupae in sealed cells - sealed brood.
The article is based on the facts derived from The Free Encyclopedia - Wikipedia on conditions of Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike.
