Gourt Home::Gourt :: Worker bee
A worker bee is a female honeybee which performs certain tasks in support of a bee hive. Worker bees undergo a well defined progression of capabilities. In the summer 98% of the bees in a hive are worker bees. In the winter, besides the queen, all bees are worker bees.
When a colony absconds (all bees leave the colony) or divides and so creates a swarm and then establishes a new colony, the bees must regress in their behavior in order to establish the first generation in the new home. The most urgent task will be the creation of new beeswax for comb. Beekeepers take advantage of this by introducing swarms into new or existing colonies where they will draw comb. Comb is much more difficult to come by than honey and requires about six times the energy to create. A newly hived swarm on bar bars (top bar hive) or empty foundation (Langsthroth box hive) will often be fed sugar water, which they can then rapidly consume to create wax for new comb (Mature hives cannot be so fed as they will store it in place of nectar, although a wintering hive may have to be fed if insufficient honey was left by the beekeeper.)
Progression of tasks
Cell cleaning (Day 1-2)
Cells used for brood must be cleaned before the next use - cells will be inspected by the queen and if unsatisfactory will not be used. Worker bees in the cleaning phase will perform this cleaning.Nurse bee (Day 3-11)
- Beginning Nurse Bees (Day 3-5)
- Advanced Nurse Bees (Day 6-11)
Wax production (Day 12-17)
Wax Bees - build cells from wax, repair old cells, and store nectar and pollen brought in by other workers. Early in the worker's career she will exude wax from the space between several of her abdominal segments. Four sets of wax glands, situated inside the last four ventral segments of the abdomen, produce wax for comb construction.Brood sealing
Eggs laid by the queen are sealed over with wax modeled to admit air. Workers in this phase will perform this.Honey sealing
Mature honey, sufficiently dried, is sealed tightly with wax to prevent absorption of moisture from the air by workers deputized to do same.Drone feeding
Drones do not feed themselves; they are fed on demand by workers.Queen attendants
A small group of bees will attend the queen, feeding her as needed.Egg moving
The queen does not usually lay eggs into queen cells; they are moved to queen cells by a worker bee.Honeycomb building
Workers will take wax from wax producing workers and build the comb with it.Pollen packing
Pollen brought into the hive for feeding the brood is also stored. It must be packed firmly into comb cells and mixed with a small amount of honey so that it will not spoil. Unlike honey, which does not support bacterial life, stored pollen will become rancid without proper care.Propolizing
The walls of the hive will be covered with a thin coating of propolis, a resinous substance obtained from plants. In combination with enzymes added by the worker this will have antibacterial and antifungal properties.Propolis is also used to close off excessive ventilation and entrances.
Mortuary bees
Dead bees and failed larvae must be removed from the hive to prevent disease and allow cells to be reused. They will be carried some distance from the hive by mortuary bees.Fanning bees
Worker bees fan the hive, cooling it with evaporated water brought by water carriers. They direct airflow into the hive or out of the hive depending on need.Guard Bees (Days 18 - 21)
protect the entrance of the hive from enemies- Soldier bees
- Entrance guard bees
- Outside guard bees
Water carriers
When the hive is in danger of overheating these bees will obtain water, usually from within a short distance from the hive and bring it back to spread on the backs of fanning bees. The worker bee has a crop separate from the nectar crop for this purpose.Foraging bees (Days 22 - 42)
The forager and scout bees travel (up to 1.5 miles) to a nectar source, pollen source or to collect propolis.Sources:
- The Honey Files: A Bee’s Life, A Teaching Guide, Produced by the National Honey Board, 2001
- Organization of a bee colony FAO
Genetic characteristic
In most common bee-species, they are infertile and never reproduce. They are still considered female, for anatomical and genetic reasons. Genetically, a worker bee does not differ from a queen bee and can even become a laying worker bee, but then will produce only male (drone) offspring, and so the colony will ultimately die out (but not without a chance of passing its genes on through the drones). Whether a larva becomes a worker or a queen depends on what kind of food it is given after the first three days of its larval form.
The stinger and evolution
The worker bee's stinger is a complex organ that allows a bee to defend itself and the hive from most mammals. Typically, the stinger can be used only once in an act of defense, known as a bee sting, as it becomes forever detached from the bee in the process. Upon delivering the stinger, the bee will subsequently die from dehydration, since the portion where the stinger bulb was removed becomes raw and exposed. The impending doom of death for such a bee can be justified by well known principles of evolution. Nevertheless, in the evolutionary context, the survival of the individual worker bee is not significant, since they do not directly contribute to the survival of the colony's genes and genetic transmission is achieved by other means.
The barbed stinger is advantageous to the survival of the colony, as only a momentary contact, a fraction of a second on a bare part of a predator, (typically the nose or near the eyes) is required - should the predator crush or brush off the attacking worker it will be to no effect as the stinger is embedded, progressing deeper (due to the sawing motion of its twin barbs) and the venom bulb is actively pumping - all this without requiring the presence of the bee. It will be easy for an attacking bee to find the nose as they are (as are mosquitos) able to sense and navigate to regions with high levels of carbon dioxide.
The effectiveness of a mass attack of bees will increase the likelihood of the survival of the colony, not just by protecting the queen but also by protecting the brood (the egg, larval and metamorphic forms of the workers), the stored pollen (important for spring build-up of the worker population), the stored honey (important for the survival of the colony over the winter, and the comb - the habitat of the colony, which would be destroyed by a predator to obtain the other valuable portions, and finally, whatever protection is offered by a cavity, in the case of cavity-dwelling bees.
Stingless bees
There are some bees native to Australia that do not have stingers and which are favored for pollination in greenhouses. These bees are not defenseless as they have an irritating secretion that they can release when they bite with their mandibles, similar to the defenses of some ants.
See also
Bees | Entomology | Beekeeping
"Worker bee"