Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
they age. This substance has been shown to reduce oxidative stress in honey-bees by
scavenging free radicals that can lead to ageing or illness - a little like drinking green tea
and taking vitamin E pills.
As she lays her eggs, the queen measures the size of the cells with her antennae before
laying one egg at the base of the cell. If the cell is a 'worker'-size cell, then the queen
will fertilize the egg as it passes out of her and, around 21 days later, one of the most
interesting and complex creatures on earth, a worker bee, inheriting genes from both
her father and mother, will emerge from the cell.
Duties
The worker is an incomplete female in that she can't mate and reproduce, but she does
do just about everything else and, if you see a honey-bee collecting nectar and pollen
from flowers, it will be a worker. Worker bees pass through various task-related phases
as they age. Unlike ants, for example, which have task-related castes (such as soldier
ants for defence and so on), honey-bee workers engage in defence or other duties at
certain ages (see Figure 3).
On emerging from her cell as an adult bee, the worker begins work by cleaning out
brood cells and then by capping brood with wax as they enter their pupal stage. She
then tends the brood and feeds them and, after that, she engages in such duties as
tending the queen. As the worker becomes older (during the summer months we are
talking of an average 15-38 day lifespan), she receives nectar from incoming foragers
and places this in storage cells. She also engages in housework, such as hive-cleaning
duties that include, for some, undertaker bee duties or the removal of dead bees.
She then engages in ventilation and fanning duties, and produces wax. Workers can
synthesize the sugars in nectar and honey into beeswax, which they extrude through
glands underneath their abdomens. Each worker has four 'wax mirrors' from which wax
is extruded. Wax is employed to build comb that is used as a nursery for brood, as a
store for pollen, a store for honey and as a surface on which to live in the hive. In other
