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fermented pollen and honey. At ten to sixteen days, her glands develop, and she begins to secrete and feed royal jelly to the younger larvae. As her wax glands develop in her abdomen, she also secretes beeswax and uses her mandible to form it into comb, a series of beeswax cells that make up the brood nest and in which pollen and honey will be stored. This beeswax is also used to cap the cells that are filled with larvae or honey. At this stage a worker bee also helps to repair damaged comb. In between these activities she takes time out to flap her wings to circulate air and provide ventilation inside the hive and to help removed moisture from the pollen, brought in by foraging bees, in order to create honey.

At about twenty days old, the worker bee will become a guard bee, stationed at the entrance of the hive. Guards admit returning bees only if the bees are part of their hive. All bees must carry their own queen’s pheromone to gain entry to the hive. Guard bees also reject old or diseased bees and drive out the drones in the fall. Guard duty is a worker’s last job inside the hive before she becomes a forager bee. By this time, the worker bee’s sting glands are fully developed, and it is her duty to defend the hive. A honeybee dies after inflicting one sting.

A worker bee does not begin foraging for pollen and nectar until she is three weeks old. At this point she will leave the hive to collect nectar to make honey, pollen to feed the hive, water to drink, and propolis, a resinous mixture used to seal up cracks and other unwanted spaces in the hive. On average, a single worker bee makes only teaspoon of honey in her lifetime.

With all these hive duties, a worker bee truly works herself to death, both by wearing out her wings and through sheer exhaustion. It is not uncommon for adult bees to die inside the hive. When they do, it is the job of the undertaker bees to remove them.

DRONES

Drones are the male bees, and they make up only 10 to 15 percent of the total honeybee colony. Drones are reared in the same fashion as the queen and worker bees, except they develop from unfertilized eggs. The drone cells are found at the lower part of the brood nest, are larger than worker cells to accommodate the wider male body, and they have raised wax caps that look like a bullet. Drone eggs hatch in three days and emerge from their larval stage in five to six days. The drones’ pupal stage is five days longer than the workers’. Chubby and squat in stature, adult drones emerge from their cells fully developed in twenty-four days and have very few duties inside the hive. They do not gather pollen or nectar and do not make honey. They do not clean the hive or take care of the young. They cannot feed or groom themselves. Because they do not have stingers, drones cannot even defend themselves or the hive. However, drones are important to the hierarchy of the hive.

A drone’s sole responsibility is to mate with a virgin queen from another hive, and mating is one of the only reasons drones leave the hive. Drones wait at designated drone congregation areas—something like a drone hangout—for a virgin queen to fly by to mate with. The fastest and strongest drones successfully mate in midair, copulating with the queen from behind in a brief and rather violent encounter. The act of mating concludes with the drone’s genitalia being ripped from his abdomen as he falls to his death. (Sounds like a one-act opera, doesn’t it?)

Birth Cycle of Honeybees

BEE LINING

How Ancient Man Found Honey

Before man domesticated bees, bee lining was an attempt at locating a feral bee nest to hive or just some wild honey as a sweet treat by following foragers back to their home. Today, this ancient practice, also called bee hunting, is still a fun activity for a nice day with fellow beekeepers. I joined one hunt while attending a beekeeping gathering.

You begin by locating a few honeybees at a flower patch or watering hole. Then the goal is to try to lure them with some sugar syrup into a box. Once they are in the box, you mark each bee with a color