Here is describing the Duties and life cycle for the Worker Honey Bee, and pictures of the queen bee and honey bee on a comb.
The life cycle and explanations.
I found this very interesting explanation of how and when the bees do their work. Its self explanatory.
Duties of the Honey Bee
Worker bees have different jobs that is according to their age. As the honey bee does not live for a long period of time.
1 – 2 days old…….When the bee hatches and is one to two days old they have the job to clean
up the cell they hatched from. Then keep the brood warm.
3 – 5 days old…….Then they feed the older larvae until they are born.
6 – 11 days old……They then must feed the youngest larvae. until they hatch as a small bee.
12 – 17 days old….They are then producing wax, obtaining food, building combs and will have
the duty to be undertakers.
18 – 21 days old…..They become guards and the entrance of the hive to protect the hive
from predators. Also bee keepers. 🙂
22 days on …………To their end of their lives, they fly from the hives and collect pollen
and nectar and water for the hive.
They sadly only live as long as 40 to 45 days. That is the worker bees.
For a view of a graph on how their life cycle.
Other Bees in the Hive
Bees don’t live for very long and work very hard.
The Queen bee will live much longer and continue to lay eggs in the wax combs, as long
as there is food in the area. Normally spring and Autumn.
Eggs have been laid in the combs and the various worker bees are doing their duties.
Feeding and cleaning and keeping the egg cells warm enough.
Note the Queen Bee is bigger than other worker bees and is marked. learn from Below.
The Queen bee Mates with the Drones that are in the hives. (males) Or it may fly off and
a drone finds the queen.
The queen bee lays eggs and the cells are made bigger for the drones to hatch as well
as a bigger and more combed like cell is formed for a new Queen bee to hatch.
learn from below.
Some times its called Queen bee cup.
Then they would determine who will leave the hive and form their own swarm or which
Queen bee will stay in the hive.
This is what happens when a swarm will swarm off. Taking some worker bees with.
The hive will get to full and they will seek another home.
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