By Special to the News
Danny Bost, Central Panhandle Beekeepers Association
Watching a honey bee hive from a distance, it would appear little to nothing is happening. At times, bees lazily buzz around the front of the hive.
A few leave to search for needed resources, while others return from foraging. Some seemingly warm themselves in the sun at the entrance. It is hard to believe up to 60,000 bees, made up of three castes, are at work performing different jobs inside.
Queens take sixteen days from fertilized egg to hatching from a peanut-shaped cell, where she receives a high diet of royal jelly. Within a few days of hatching, the queen will leave the hive on her nuptial flight. She mates with multiple drones to ensure genetic diversity within the hive.
When she returns, she becomes hive-bound, only to leave again if she departs with a swarm. Her duty is to lay eggs, up to one thousand a day, providing the hive with sufficient female workers, fertilized eggs, and male drones, unfertilized eggs.
Queens can live for several years but often get replaced because they are too old, have slowed down in egg production, or have swarmed.
Workers take 21 days from a fertilized egg to a hatching bee and become the workforce of the hive. After hatching, they move quickly through various household duties as nurse bees, comb builders, hive guards, and eventually, foragers.
They produce royal jelly and brood food for feeding the queen and larvae. They maintain the hive temperature/humidity and are responsible for gathering, making, curing, and storing the honey we love. The worker’s life expectancy is rarely more than eight weeks.
Drones take the longest to hatch, twenty-four days from an unfertilized egg to a hatching bee. One interesting fact is they have a grandfather but not a father. When it comes to the male honey bees, you would think, king of the castle but, no, you would be wrong.
Their only action in the hive is eating. They have no stinger and cannot help protect the hive. After begging workers for food, drones leave the hive and cluster together in a drone consolidation area, waiting for virgin queens to buzz along.
They swarm, referred to as a drone comet, after the queens. One at a time, they mate with the queen during flight and, upon completion, fall to earth to die. Their contribution to the survival of honey bees is complete.
In preparation for winter, the remaining drones are forcibly driven from the hive by workers to manage the resources required for survival.
Honey bees are an exciting insect to study. Every day, I learn something new about them; I hope I always will. As we cannot cover all the aspects of the honey bee’s life in this short article, please visit us at the Central Panhandle Beekeepers Association.
We are more than willing to share additional honey bee information with you. Until then, enjoy your bees.
Danny Bost is the District 1 Representative for the Florida State Beekeepers Association and previous President of the Central Panhandle Beekeepers Association. He has been a beekeeper since 2019 and works in honey bee preservation and promoting beekeeping in this area.