A Simple Guide to Keeping Honey Bees
Go to: Previous Article Next Article
One of the well known insects which are economically beneficial is honey bees. For thousands of years, humans have plundered honey beehive colonies to get honey, bee larvae and beeswax. Now, honey bees are commonly kept in artificial hives throughout the U.S either on large commercial bee farms or hobbyists who have only a few hives and who just like being with these type of insects.
Honey Bee Biology
Honey bees, like ants, termites and some wasps, are known to be very social insects. Unlike ants and wasps, bees are vegetarians; pollen is their food protein and honey produces their carbohydrate which is made from nectar. Social insects live together in groups, cooperate in foraging tasks and the caring for the young, and have different type's individuals.
Listed here, are the three types of bees:
The Worker Bees:
* Reproductively underdeveloped females that do all the work of the colony.
* A colony may have 2,000 to 60,000 worker bees.
Drones
* Male bees. During spring and summer a colony may have 0 to 500 drones.
* Drones fly from the hive and mate in the air with queens from other colonies.
Queen Bee:
* This bee specializes in producing eggs.
* Once a queen bee gets lost or then dies, workers select a few young worker larvae and feed them a special food called "royal jelly." Feeding these worker bees will make these special larvae develop into Queens bees.
* Which means that the difference between workers and queens is the quality of the larval diet. Normally there is only one queen per colony.
* The queen produces "pheromones" which then regulates and affects the behavior of the rest of the bees
The workers build a hexagonal beeswax cell for the queen to lay her eggs. Developing young honey bees which are called the "Brood" and they go through 4 different stages: the egg, the larva, the inactive pupa and the young adult.
Young works just emerging, begin working almost immediately. As they age, these are the tasks done by workers:
1. They clean cells
2. Circulate air with their wings to ripen the honey
3. They feed the larvae
4. Practice flying
5. Receive pollen and nectar from foragers
6. Guard hive entrance and forage
Honeybee colonies live for years, unlike colonies of social wasps and bumble bees. Which means, the bee colonies activity is geared towards at surviving the following winter season.
Article Source: Articlelogy.com
- Credit Cards A big selection of Cards in all flavors: Bad Credit Cards, Secured Cards, Prepaid Cards, Credit Cards for Canada, Low Interest Cards, etc -
Word Count: 433
Reduce Your Debts Without Bankruptcy. See How Much You Can Save. Free Debt Analysis
