Honey Bee

Honey bee are highly social and laborious insects. Honey bee belongs to the phylum Arthropda. It is very useful insect as it produces honey and also plays the role in pollination of flower. The collect flower nectar on their hive and produce honey. They live in colony with strict discipline. Organizationally there are three types of hone bee in a hive, the are

1. Queen bee. Inside a hive there is a largest and most shiny bee called queen bee. Queen bee mates with drone bee and lay eggs. Queen bee generates special smell and all other bees identify their hive with that smell. During matting period queen bee comes out of hive mates with drones on air which  is called matting flight or nuptial flight.
2. Dron bee: Drone bee is smaller than queen bee and larger than worker bee. Its body is covered with hair. They don’t have honey gland and can’t take food themselves. They are feed by worker bees. The only their duty is to matt with queen bee.
3. Worker bee: It is smallest in size and they in largest numbers. They collect nectar from flower, fight with enemy, protect larva, make hive and feed for drone bee.

Life cycle of honey bee

Egg Stage:

Queen bee is the only bee in the colony who is capable of laying about 2,000 to 3,000 eggs in one day. The egg is positioned upright and falls on the side by the third day. The queen bee lays both fertilized egg and unfertilized egg. The fertilized egg develops into female bees or queen bees. The unfertilized egg hatches and male bees are born; also known as drone bees.

The Larval Stage:

The difference between a worker and the queen bee is made three days after the egg transforms into larvae and six days after the egg is laid in the beehive. The “royal jelly” is fed to all the larvae, i.e., the female bees, the workers and the drone bees during their initial three days as larvae. The larva sheds skin multiple times throughout this stage. Later, the royal jelly is fed only to the female larvae, which eventually becomes a queen bee. Finally, the worker bees cover the top of the cell with beeswax to protect and facilitate the transformation of the larvae into a pupa.

The Pupa Stage:

Here the bee has developed parts like wings, eyes, legs and small body hair that physically appears close to an adult bee.

The Adult Stage:

Once the pupa is matured, the new adult bee chews its way out of the closed-cell. The queen bee takes 16 days from the egg stage to form into an adult. The worker bee takes 18 to 22 days for complete development, and drone bees take 24 days to develop into an adult bee.