Fascinating facts about honey bees, advantages, characterstics

FACTS ABOUT HONEY BEES

Honeybee (Apis indica)

Honeybee is an arthropoda. Body of honeybee is divided into head, thorax & abdomen as other insects. The head bears mouth parts after sucking nectar of flowers. The thorax consists of three pairs of jointed appendages and two pairs of wings. It has elongated and segmented stomach. It is a social insect. They produce honey which is very nutritious food for human being. Honeybee have organized colony with strict discipline and sharp division of labour. They always remain busy in their own work.

Organization of colony

There are three kinds of bees in the colony of honeybee. They are queen, drones and workers. Drones are males and all rest bees are females.

Facts of queen bee

The queen is only the egg laying female. All the members of colony are her offsprings. Queen is created at the decision of workers bees by feeding larva only royal jelly throughout its development. A queen bee may live for 2 to 5 years. The queen is produced from over sized cell and developes in only 16 days. It has different morphology and behaviour. In apis queen practices only polyandry. It mates with many males during flight and comes back to comb to lay eggs. The sting of queen is not barbed and it lacks wax producing gland as workers. After mating queen produces 1500-2000 eggs per days. It lays one egg in each comb. It produces phermones that commands and regulates behaviour of workers and helps to track queen during the migration phase. Queen has 32 chromosomes.

Facts of drone bees

Drone are males and produced from unfertilized eggs. They have haploid having one set of chromosome I.e. only 16. Drones do not have stringer. They need 24 days for their development. Their function is to have sex with queen. During the time of lack of feeding material drones are turned out from the hive by workers. If so they die being unable to find food. Drones also die after mating. Drones are smaller than queen but larger than workers. They are black but little bit shiny.

Facts of worker bees

Workers are also female bee obtained from fertilized eggs. Their function is to make hive, collect food, and feed the developing larvae. They need 21 days for their development. Worker bees perform their duties until they die. They are smallest in size. They collect nectar & pollen grains. They also guard hive and comb. They take care of larvae. Number of chromosomes in worker is also 32.

Life cycle of honeybees

A colony of bees contains only one queen, few thousands drones and thousands of workers (about 60,000). The number differs species to species.

During her first flight the queen mates with many drones and collects sperms in her sperm sacs. After mating she returns to hive and begins to lay eggs. The queen lays eggs singly ina cell of honey comb. In 3 to 4 days larva hatches out from each egg. Larvae depend on workers for their feeding. Workers feed different larvae differently. The feeding determines their development. The larvae of fertilized eggs which feeds only on royal jelly develops into a queen. The larvae of fertilized eggs which feed on nectar and pollen grains develop into workers and larvae of unfertilized eggs developed into drones.

Larvae changes into pupa. The larvae of queen changes into pupa in 8.5 days of its emergence but worker larva needs 9 days to go to pupal stage. Similarly, larvae of drones pupate on 9.5 days of emergence. The workers crap the cells when larva changes into pupa. The duration of pupal stage of three casts of bees is also different. The queen spend 10 days in pupal stage and the drones spend 12 days in pupal stage.

As the adults emerges from pupa, drones mate with queen, workers perform their duties and queen begins to lay eggs after mating as previous.

Advantages of honeybee
Bee is beneficial insect. Benefits honey can be listed as follows:-

1. Honey is very rich nutritious food for human beings.

2. Honey contains flavonoids and antioxidants which help to reduce the risk of cancers and heart diseases.

3. Honey of honeybees reduces cough and throat irritation.

4. Bees help in pollination of plants.

5. Wax produced from bees are used in the production of foods, cosmetics and pharmeceuticals. It is used in making chewing gums and candle. In cosmetics it is used to make lip balm, lip gloss, hand cream, eye shadow, eye linear and mosterizers.