The Life of a Worker Bee
Richard Wahl
Her Royal Majesty the Queen:
Before any discussion about worker bees, we must first look at what it takes to be a queen. The queen’s pervasive pheromones in the hive ensure workers that there will be a continuation of progeny to support all the required hive tasks. But what made her so special to be selected as the queen? Most likely the previous queen was not living up to expectations, showing signs of aging and no longer capable of laying anywhere from 1,500 to 2,000 eggs a day. She may have been injured by one of those intrusive human invaders or simply exhausted her egg supply after a busy two to three year lifespan. If she was lucky, she may have even lived to the ripe old age of five years.
But the workers can sense when a queen is failing, and even when not failing, they will build three to six emergency queen cells normally along the bottom of a frame. In the event the hive is becoming overcrowded, that queen cell may be in the middle or upper portion of a frame, which usually indicates the potential for a supersedure of the failing queen. Whether the ailing queen must lay an egg in the queen cup or the workers move an egg to a queen cup is still a subject up for debate. Having seen ants and termites moving eggs, it does not seem to be much of a stretch to believe bees, as an adept society, would also be able to move eggs. In either event, once the egg is in a queen cup the workers will expand that cup into a peanut shape and continue to feed the larva that has hatched after its three days as an egg. The bees continue to feed a special mix called royal jelly. The continuation of the feeding of royal jelly throughout the larva stage is what determines this particular cell will become a queen. After five and a half more days as a larva, the cell that is at least twice the size of a worker cell is capped. Another seven and a half days will pass when the new queen will emerge from her cell. From egg to emerging queen takes only sixteen days, despite her being a larger sized bee. It may take a day or two for her to orient to the worker bees and hive around her, after which she will leave the hive to mate. She may take multiple flights to drone congregation areas, where she will mate with as many as fifteen to twenty willing drones. (I’ll say a bit more about drones at the end of this piece.) The drone congregation areas she visits are normally a bit farther away (up to five miles) than the two to three mile range where her workers are scouting for nectar and pollen. That way it is more likely that she will mate with drones from different colonies thus increasing the genetic diversity of her offspring. Having completed mating flights, she returns to the hive to never leave again (unless moved by an intrusive human or having the urge to swarm) and begins her reign as queen. A new queen may lay more than one egg in a cell but this is very short lived, if it happens at all, and normally clears up quickly as the a new queen gets her bearings. It may take two to three more days for her to become a competent egg layer as she finishes her growth to a full sized queen. The whole process from egg to new laying queen may take a month or a bit more, depending on advantageous weather during the mating flights.
Those Dedicated Workers:
Now that there is a queen in the hive, the worker’s jobs can be examined. The workers start out as eggs laid by the reigning queen. The queen can lay as many as 2,000 eggs in a day. For the first day the egg stands upright, one end gradually tipping to lie prone. In this way the beekeeper can tell how recently the egg was lain; if upright then within the past day, if laying more prone then it is two or three days old. While in the egg stage, other newly emerged bees store royal jelly around the egg.
The three day egg stage average can vary by as much as a day either way since egg growth is temperature dependent. After about three days, the egg hatches and becomes a larva feeding off the royal jelly. The core of eggs and larva are kept in the 93°F to 95°F (34°C to 35°C) range during this development stage. In nearly all cases, the bee will become a worker and so the diet is changed to the addition of pollen and honey secreted by attending nurse bees. The larva grows rapidly on this additional protein diet for about six more days after which the larva is capped and continues growth as a pupa in the enclosed cell. While the larva is growing on its side, it is breathing through a spiracle on one side of its body. This is why it is important to not roll a larva when grafting for queen cell starter cups. If the breathing side is blocked it will result in the death of the larva being moved. At about the ninth day, after being laid as an egg, the larva is capped by attending bees and moves into its pupa stage. As mentioned in a previous article, just before capping is when the mites like to move in to feed off the pupa body fat and multiply as the pupa grows. The new bee pupa continues to grow in the cell surrounded by the protein pollen and honey mix previously loaded in the cell by worker nurse bees. On around the twenty-first day, the pupa has grown into a mature bee and emerges from the cell by chewing through the capping. This is when the job assignments of the worker bee begin.
The Jobs of Worker Bees:
It is well known that worker bees can adapt to the varying strengths and needs of the hive, as well as nectar and pollen availability and weather conditions. Therefore, this sequential list of worker bee jobs is relative to the surrounding conditions and can vary greatly depending on the season. The first job of the worker is to clean out its cell in the brood nest. This may include cleaning surrounding cells if a neighboring larva or pupa did not survive. This work could go on for a few days or up to two weeks. During this time, the new bees are heavily feeding on pollen and honey/nectar stores. After this, the worker will become a nurse bee secreting royal jelly for eggs, feeding and caring for larva.
Some workers may become queen attendants, feeding and grooming her and transmitting her pheromones to other bees. Having completed these jobs in the first two weeks of their life, the workers may become wax makers using glands under their abdomens to secrete small flakes of wax. In this way, they can cap larva and draw out new comb. In addition to wax making, sometime after the two week point, the workers will transition to receiving, ripening and depositing nectar and pollen in the hive. During this stage, these “house bees” receive the nectar from foragers, processing it in their honey stomachs and storing it in cells. They also transfer pollen from foragers and pack it into pollen cells in the hive. They convert tree resin into propolis used as bee glue to seal cracks in the hive and use it as an antiseptic due to its antibacterial qualities. They may also consume water brought in from foragers or pass it onto other bees. The workers are also ventilating the hive to evaporate moisture from the honey and the wax makers are capping full honey cells when the correct low moisture point is reached. These house bee jobs may go on for two or three weeks. During and after these jobs, some workers may be designated as guard bees inspecting returning field bees to allow admittance to the hive and deter invaders from entering. Similarly, some workers are removing debris and diseased or dead bees from the hive as mortuary workers. Only after completing a tour of duty as a house bee, will the worker become a forager. Prior to becoming a forager the workers will make orientation flights around the hive to become familiar with where the hive is located. This will also occur if the hive surroundings have changed or if they have been confined for a period of time. Since many bee sisters were eggs and larva at the same time, they reach orientation flight at the same time and it is not unusual to see a large number of bees circling outside the hive entrance for a short period. These are the bees that have passed through the caretaker and house bee stage of their lives. After a few orientation flights near the hive, workers will become foragers. Worker bees taking on a specific role normally remain in that role for the duration of their lives. For example, if a bee becomes a water collector it will most likely remain so. The same is true for pollen, nectar or resin collectors. Since foraging can require long and/or many flights that may be fraught with danger from other predators or pesticides, the worker bee’s lifespan may vary from a few days up to another month. They will eventually wear themselves out resulting in the bee’s death. The approximate time frames given in all cases above can vary greatly dependent on the weather and season. The lifespan of Summer bees will normally be from four to six weeks while bees emerging in late Fall could live up to six months in some long Winter areas.
Worker Bees as Scouts:
Bees may decide to swarm from the hive due to a variety of reasons. The most common reasons are due to overcrowding (frames filled with nectar and pollen with no room for the queen to lay eggs) or the ever present urge of every living organism to reproduce. Swarming may also be caused due to an excessive mite population, continual over heating or absconding, simply to go to a better location. A more in depth article about swarming may be appropriate for a future essay. In any case, bees preparing to swarm will engorge themselves with honey and at some point anywhere from one-third to two-thirds of the hive population may leave. Normally, these bees with their old queen will settle as a cluster somewhere in the proximity of the parent hive and several dozen worker bees designated as scouts will fan out in different directions to look for a new cavity to call home. As each worker bee scout promotes their found location, other scouts go to review those locations and eventually a consensus is reached as to the best new site. This process may take anywhere from a few hours to a few days, often depending on the weather. These worker bee scouts then guide the swarm to the new home. The swarm is made up of a variety of workers as described before, but many of whom are ready to draw comb and prepare cells so the queen can begin her egg laying. I had the occasion to watch a swarm leave one of my hives a few years ago and it was the most exciting, exhilarating and disappointing thing at the same time. I knew I should have split that hive after an earlier inspection.
Laying Workers:
Since all the workers in the hive are sisters (or half-sisters), there may be occasions when workers lay eggs. This will normally occur if the hive has been queenless for three weeks or more. Since the queen pheromone is a key component in keeping the hive organized, its loss results in chaos in the hive. As a last ditch effort to keep the hive going, some of the workers reproductive organs develop and they start to lay eggs. Since these workers have never mated and are laying unfertilized eggs, they can only produce drones. And as the standard worker bee is smaller than the queen, their smaller abdomen cannot reach the bottom of a cell and eggs are attached to cell sides or more than one egg appears in a cell in a chaotic arrangement. Other workers elongate the cells for the drone larva and patchy networks of cells appear that have raised caps since drone cells are larger than worker cells. Eventually, the hive will decline with a decreasing number of workers and increasing number of drones and it will fail. It can be quite difficult to correct a laying worker hive and may not be worth the effort. Since laying workers are now giving off their own pheromones, they will kill any new queen introduced to the worker laying hive. A better option is to shake bees off any worker laid frames outside a stronger hive and combine the remainder of the worker laying hive to another strong hive using the newspaper method. I have had success shaking the frames with laying workers off outside the hive, adding a strong brood frame or two to the laying worker hive along with a queen from a nuc. The nuc was meant to be turned into a hive at some point anyway. I would not take brood frames from another hive to do this, as it only weakens the donating hive. The organized nuc bees and queen take over the hive and order is restored, but only if laying worker frames are shook off outside the offending hive.
Drones:
A ten to fifteen percent drone population in a hive is a sign of a good hive. The drones are male bees and have one purpose in life which is to mate with new queens. They do not sting, do not work and do not make honey or collect nectar or pollen. Drones are raised in cells that are slightly larger than the worker cells and have more of a bulbous cap on them. Just as before, they spend about three days as an egg, six and a half days as larva and another fifteen days as a pupa resulting in twenty-four days from egg to emergence. Drones may live up to two months and fly to drone congregation areas where they hope to mate with virgin queens. If a drone mates with a queen, they die soon thereafter as they lose their male parts in the mating process. Unfortunately for the drones, as Winter sets in, they are usually expelled from the hive to die in the cold since no queens will be mating in the Winter months and the workers are loathe to feed these Winter freeloaders. The beekeeper or human manager of the hive will soon find there are no absolutes in working with bees. Most of this discussion is a result of my own experiences with bees which I have found to be a most amazing sustainable organism. When given adequate shelter, occasional food assistance and most critically, the monitoring and treatment for mites as well as any noted disease, they not only provide critical pollination services but perhaps a bit of extra honey for us humans to enjoy. As always, your experience may vary based on your environmental conditions, experience or state of your hives. Continue to watch and enjoy these amazing creatures.
