Honey bees the most well-known, popular and economically beneficial insects. For thousands of years, man has plundered honey beehive colonies to get honey, bee larvae and beeswax. Now, honey bees are commonly kept in artificial hives throughout the United States either on large commercial bee farms or hobbyists who have only a few hives and who simply enjoy working with these fascinating insects.

Honey Bee Biology

Honey bees, like ants, termites and some wasps, are social insects. Unlike ants and wasps, bees are vegetarians; their food protein comes from pollen and their carbohydrate comes from honey which they make from nectar. Social insects live together in groups, cooperate in foraging tasks and the caring for the young, and have different types individuals. Listed here, there are three types of honey bees:

Worker Bees:

* Reproductively underdeveloped females that do all the work of the colony.

* A colony may have 2,000 to 60,000 workerbees.

Drones

* Male bees. During spring and summer a colony may have 0 to 500 drones.

* Drones fly from the hive and mate in the air with queens from other colonies.

Queen Bee:

* A fully fertile female specialized for producing eggs.

* When a queen is lost or dies, workers select a few young worker larvae and feed them a special food called "royal jelly." Feeding these worker bees will make these special larvae develop into Queens bees.

* Therefore difference between workers and queens is the quality of the larval diet. Normally there is only one queen per colony.

* The queen produces "pheromones" which affects and regulates the behavior of the other bees.

The queen lays all her eggs in hexagonal beeswax cells built by workers. Developing young honey bees which are called the "Brood" and they go through four stages: the egg, the larva, the inactive pupa and the young adult.

Young works just emerging, begin working almost immediately. As they age, workers do the following tasks in sequence:

1. They clean cells

2. Circulate air with their wings to ripen the honey

3. Feed larvae

4. Practice flying

5. Receive pollen and nectar from foragers

6. Guard hive entrance and forage

Honeybee colonies live year after year, Unlike colonies of social wasps and bumble bees. Therefore, all activity in a bee colony is geared towards at surviving the next winter.

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