Worker bee

From Freepedia

A worker bee is a female honeybee which performs certain tasks in support of a bee colony (bees within a beehive). Worker bees undergo a well defined progression of capabilities. 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 wax 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.)

Contents 1 Progression of tasks 1.1 Nurse bee 1.2 Wax production 1.3 Cell cleaning 1.4 Brood sealing 1.5 Honey sealing 1.6 Drone feeding 1.7 Queen attendants 1.8 Egg moving 1.9 Honeycomb building 1.10 Pollen packing 1.11 Propolizing 1.12 Mortuary bees 1.13 Fanning bees 1.14 Soldier bees 1.15 Entrance guard bees 1.16 Outside guard bees 1.17 Water carriers 1.18 Foraging bees 2 Genetic characteristic 3 The stinger and evolution 4 Stingless bees 5 See also

Progression of tasks

Nurse bee

When newly emerged, the bee will first become a nurse bee, assisting other bees in cleaning themselves after emergence from their cells and preparing food for and feeding the larval forms.

Wax production

Early in the worker's career she will exude wax from the space between several of her abdominal segments. Other bees will masticate the wax and use it for building comb and sealing brood and honey.

Cell cleaning

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.

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 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.

Soldier bees

Soldiers hang around near the entrance and attack invaders. They work in concert with entrance guards.

Entrance guard bees

These inspect incoming bees to ensure that they are bringing in food and have the correct hive odor. Other bees will be rejected or attacked with soldier bees.

Outside guard bees

Outer guards may take short flights around the outside of the hive in response to disturbances.

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

These travel (up to 1.5 miles) to obtain nectar and pollen.

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 is usable only once. The bee will then die from dehydration due to the exposed portion where the stinger bulb was removed.

In the case of the honeybee, one can attribute the usefulness of a worker's single use detachable stinger to well known principles of evolution considered in the context of the honeybee's social organization, even considering that the delivery of the stinger is fatal to the bee.

In the an evolutionary context it is not the survival of the individual worker bee that is important, for these workers do not directly contribute to the survival of the colony's genes - these are only done though the queen's ability to produce the male drones to ultimately breed with virgin queens from other colonies and the worker's ability to produce such queens from eggs laid by that queen, either by supercession (queen replacement), or queen development associated with a resident queen's leading of a swarm out of the colony.

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 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

 

Honeybee types and characteristics (edit)
Queen bees
Queen bee | Virgin queen | Piping queen
Worker bees
Worker bee | Laying worker bee
Drone bees
Drone bee
Other pages
List of honeybee articles