Honey Bees are social insects. Their colonies includes a queen, drones and workers. Honey bees produce honey as a food source which they store in the hives and consume during the winter months when there are no flowers blooming and there is no nectar around. They produce so much honey, more than they can eat and this allows there hives to be farmed and the honey made available to humans.
The Queen Honey Bee is the largest bee in the colony and the only bee capable of laying eggs. A larva which is a few days old will be selected by the workers to be reared as the queen. After she emerges from her cell. she mates in flight with drone (male) bees. During this mating, she receives several million sperm cells, which last her entire life span of nearly two years. After mating, the queen honey bee will begin to lay eggs. She is capable of laying up to 3,000 eggs in one day.
The Drones of the colonies are all males. They have no stingers and they do not collect pollen or food. Their main purpose is to mate with the queen. This may seem like an easy job, however, if the colony becomes short of food, they are the first to be kicked out! Unlucky really.
The workers are all females that are not developed for mating. They are the smallest bees in the colony. Workers have many jobs. they feed the queen and larvae, guard the hive entrance and help to keep the hive cool by fanning their wings. Larvae are initially fed with royal jelly produced by worker bees, later switching to honey and pollen. The exception is a larva fed solely on royal jelly, which will develop into a queen bee.
Young worker bees clean the hive and feed the larvae. After this, they begin building comb cells. They progress to other within-colony tasks as they become older, such as receiving nectar and pollen from foragers. Later still, a worker leaves the hive and typically spends the remainder of its life as a forager.
Honey is a sweet and viscous fluid produced by honey bees and derived from the nectar of flowers. A main effect of bees collecting nectar to make honey is pollination, which is very important for flowering plants. In the hive the bees use their ‘honey stomachs’ to ingest and regurgitate the nectar a number of times until it is partially digested. It is then stored in the honeycomb. Nectar is high in both water content and natural yeasts which, unchecked, would cause the sugars in the nectar to ferment (conversion of carbohydrates into alcohols or acids). After the final regurgitation, the honeycomb is left unsealed. Bees inside the hive fan their wings, creating a strong draft across the honeycomb which enhances evaporation of much of the water from the nectar. The reduction in water content, which raises the sugar concentration, prevents fermentation. Ripe honey, as removed from the hive by the beekeeper, has a long shelf life and will not ferment.
