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A worker bee is any female bee that lacks the reproductive capacity of the colony's queen bee and carries out the majority of tasks needed for the functioning of the hive. While worker bees are present in all eusocial bee species, the term is rarely used (outside of scientific literature) for bees other than honey bees , particularly the ...
Apart from the queen bee, the remaining female bees are known as the worker bees, as these individuals perform all the tasks necessarily to maintain the hive including tending to the eggs, larvae, and pupae, foraging for food and water, cleaning the beehive and producing honey. These tasks are divided among the female worker bees by a factor of ...
Worker bees secrete the wax used to build the hive, clean, maintain and guard it, raise the young and forage for nectar and pollen; the nature of the worker's role varies with age. For the first 10 days of their lives, worker bees clean the hive and feed the larvae. After this, they begin building comb cells.
Workers of A. florea, like those of the species A. mellifera, also engage in worker policing, a process where nonqueen eggs are removed from the hive. Queenless A. florea colonies have been observed to merge with nearby queen-right A. florea colonies, suggesting workers are attracted to queen bee pheromones. [33]
The main difference found between African and European honey bees were a few behavioral traits in the worker bees that were all related to the workers’ food preference. [12] It was found that Apis mellifera scutellata workers focused on pollen processing behaviors while European workers focused on nectar processing behaviors.
A commercial beekeeper at work Western honey bee on a honeycomb. Humans have kept honey bee colonies, commonly in hives, for millennia. [106] Depictions of humans collecting honey from wild bees date to 15,000 years ago; efforts to domesticate them are shown in Egyptian art around 4,500 years ago. [107] Simple hives and smoke were used. [108] [109]
There is a high risk of injury or death in foraging, which the queen offsets by allowing the worker bees to do this dangerous task. However, towards the end of the colony cycle, when the worker population has begun to dwindle, the queen is best used as a forager, to provide sustenance for the next generation of reproductive bees. [12]
Male bees have also been found to have longer flight ranges than worker bees, likely because they move farther away from the nest to find mates. Males have flight distances of anywhere from 2.6 to 9.9 km. If males also contribute to pollination, this might increase previously predicted pollen flow ranges based on worker flight behavior. [25]