Someone asked me recently how many bees were in a hive. It’s one of those “how long is a piece of string” questions because it’s dependent on the size of the hive. Let’s assume the hive is a standard size hive, it would contain a queen (one), hundreds of drone bees (male) and up to 80,000 worker bees. Although it's worth noting that if there were two queens in the hive that would signify some serious trouble. A newly hatched queen will sting her unhatched rivals, killing them while they are still in their cells. If two queens hatch at once,they must fight to the death.
The worker bees can kill the reigning queen by clustering around her.
Novices like myself typically think the queen is the most important bee in the hive. Truth be told, she is not the one who calls the shots; that lies with the worker bees who make all the important decisions for the colony. And such decisions can include killing an existing queen and raising a new one if they don’t get on with her or if she’s not pulling her weight. The worker bees can kill the reigning queen by clustering around her – known as “balling” - to raise her body temperature and effectively cause her to die by overheating. This process is called 'Supersedure'. It's not pleasant but sometimes needed in order to keep the hive functioning. Supersedure may also be forced by a conventional beekeeper and something I'm not sure I agree with, for example by clipping off one of the queen's middle or posterior legs. This makes her unable to properly place her eggs at the bottom of the brood cell; the workers detect this and then rear replacement queens.
If a queen suddenly dies, the workers will attempt to create an "emergency queen" by selecting several brood cells where a larva has just emerged which are then flooded with royal jelly. Royal jelly is secreted from the glands in the heads of worker bees and is fed to all bee larvae, whether they are destined to become drones (males), workers (sterile females), or queens (fertile females). After three days, the drone and worker larvae are no longer fed with royal jelly, but queen larvae continue to be fed this special substance throughout their development.
Conventional beekeepers who try to introduce a new queen into their colony may find that the workers reject her and kill her by the same “balling” method so caution should be taken to introduce a new member to the hive.
Here’s another little fact about the queen, she is the only sexually mature female in the hive. She produces off spring of worker bees and drones to keep the hive up and running.
Mating occurs in flight and in a group. The unfertilised queen will join a group of make bees (drones) for her first flight. While in flight the queen will release a scent and signals to attract the drones. The queen will only mate with 10-20 drones within the vast ‘cloud’ of drones. As a result of mating, the drone will die as his organs and abdominal tissues become detached after the act. If that wasn’t bad enough, drones are kicked out of the hive in Winter to ensure there is enough winter food for the remaining bees to survive the cold months. So it’s rough to be the male in the hive.
Let’s spend a little time on worker bees. Their main roles in the hive is to gather nectar, protect the hive and the honey, build the honeycomb, store pollen and the least glamourous job of removing the dead. The lifespan for a worker bee is around 6 weeks for an active colony. But in the winter months this can be around 4-6 months.
They fly 2-3 miles in search of flowers and can visit over 500 flowers before returning to the hive.
Did you know that the bees start off as ‘house bees’? They can just go out on day one to collect nectar, they need to start at the bottom of the ranks. ‘House bees’ tend to stay in the hive and look after it, remove the dead and look after the queen. After a while the house bees become ‘field bees’ where they are able to leave the hive and go out into the fields themselves. ‘Field bees’ commence by flying around the hive itself to orientate themselves prior to venturing out fully. They fly 2-3 miles in search of flowers and can visit over 500 flowers before returning to the hive.
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