workers

Life as a hive bee

For the first three weeks of its life, a bee works in the hive. The young bees begin their worker lives as cleaning bee . They clean the brood cells to prepare them for the new brood, because queens only lay their eggs in perfectly clean combs. After three days in the cleaning service, her new job begins as nurse bee . Now their new job is having up to 40,000 maggots feed juice to feed. But the queen is also fed royal jelly by the nurse bees fed. The nurses receive pheromones from the queen, which they distribute among the other bees in the colony.

Between the 12th and 20th day of their lives, the workers are as honey makers employed. Your task is now to take the honey from the foragers and distribute it among the colony or store it. The collected pollen baskets are taken from the foragers' hind legs and either fed to nurse bees and larvae, or as pollen bread stored.

At some hive bees the wax glands are also active from the 11th day. These bees then work as Construction bees , because they can produce wax plates, which they then build into new honeycombs or use to expand honeycombs. Even if each individual bee works independently, work in a group is necessary to raise the temperature to 30°C to 40°C in the burrow area. This is the only way for the wax to become supple and easy to install. Some of them also cling to the flight hole and fan the air out of the hive to regulate the temperature.

Between the 18th and 21st day the production of poison and alarm pheromones has increased. Now the hive bees take over the activity more often than guardian at the flight hole. Guardians check incoming forager bees for the smell of their own colony. But bees from another tribe can also beg for admission if, for example, they have lost their way, or if they come from a broken-up colony. To do this, they adopt a hesitant and humble attitude and offer food they have brought with them. Predatory bees or other intruders are warded off and, if necessary, with the poison sting attacked. If the guard bees face a superior force, for example a mouse, then alarm pheromones are released that call for reinforcements.

Flying bees: foragers and scouts

A bee spends the last part of its life, from the 20th day, mainly as a bee flying bee . The foraging bees bring everything that the bee colony needs: pollen, nectar, honeydew, water and also tree resins. track bees scout the countryside for one to catch up with costume out of. The bee forage includes all food (nectar, pollen and honeydew) that has been brought into the local beehive. If the tracker bees find a lot of flowers with sweet nectar, hive bees are given nectar samples, which taste them first. If these pre-tasting bees approve of the nectar, they will let you know scouts the collectors in the hive by means of a dance ( round dance or waggle dance ) about the yield and quality of the food source, as well as about its location (only with the waggle dance). Now the foraging bees swarm out to catch up with the honey bees. Solitary flowering plants are rarely visited by honey bees.

Flying bees have a more dangerous life than hive bees. Therefore, this is the last task of the oldest bees in a colony. You can also see their age by looking at the foragers and tracker bees, because their once lush furry has disappeared in many places, their abdomen is often completely bare and their wings are often torn at the tips. Most flying bees die on the way and not in the hive itself. They had a busy life behind them.