Life Cycle Of Honey Bee

INTRODUCTIONThe life cycle of a honey bee is perennial. Each colony contains three adult castes: egglaying queens, sperm-producing male drones and nonreproductive female workers. The only job of the drone is to mate with the queen during seasonal mating flights, and soon after discharging their sperm, drones die. Worker honey bees are able to live for six weeks, while queens can survive up to five years.

LIFE CYCLE OF HONEY BEEEgg Hatching Formation Of Larva Formation Of Pupa Division Of Labour Mechanism Of Honey Bee Mating Laying Of Eggs Life Span Of Honey Bee Behaivor of Honey Bee

EGG HATCHING

Each colony contains only one queen, which mates at an early age and collects more than 5 million sperm. A honey bee queen has one mating flight and stores enough sperm during the mating flight to lay eggs throughout her life. When a queen can no longer lay eggs, new queens become responsible for mating and laying honey bee eggs. Honey bee eggs measure 1 to 1.5 mm long, about half the size of a single grain of rice. When the queen lays her eggs, she moves through the comb, closely examining each cell before laying her eggs. The process of laying one egg takes only a few seconds, and a queen is capable of laying up to 2,000 honey bee eggs within a single day.

FORMATION OF LARVAi. Circle larva The derma opens and the larva is released, which lies crooked on the cell ground. The amah bees release a white fluid in the cell, that fills the lava sideways (lateral). The growth take place exponential (weight progression, 2nd. day: 3,4 mg, 3th. day: 33,3 mg, 4th.Day: 100,1 mg, 5th. day: 134,5 mg, 6th. day: 155,2 mg). ii. Stretched larva After 5,5 to 6 days the larva is too big to lay in the cell and it start to stretch upright itself. The mouth is direction to the cell opening. The cells were closed with an operculum - at that time this is the end of fading through amah bees. The operculum is not airtight, otherwise the larva wouldnt be able to breathing. The after of the stretched larva has been developed, so the larva from now on is defecating to the cell ground. In the defecot contain parts of pollen which were mixed to the nutrition since the 4th. day. The larva starts to spider a cocoon round itself.

FORMATION OF PUPAWe call it now pre-pupa, later pupa. 15 days after the oviposition the later adult could be recognized in rudimentary ways. The pupa is in the beginning absolutely white the pupa will be until hatch more and more darker; this is the process of hardening of the chitin coat. After the bite through the operculum the adult insect (imago) gets out.

DEVELOPMENT STAGES OF THE BEE

DIVISION OF LABOUR

The queen require a time of 16 days from egg until adult the worker bee 21 days and the drone 24 days. This procedure is called holometaboly. Only one queen is usually present in a hive. New virgin queens develop in enlarged cells through differential feeding of royal jelly by workers. When the existing queen ages or dies or the colony becomes very large a new queen is raised by the worker bees. The virgin queen takes one or several nuptial flights and once she is established starts laying eggs in the hive. A fertile queen is able to lay fertilized or unfertilized eggs. Each unfertilized egg contains a unique combination of 50% of the queen's genes[1] and develops into a haploid drone. The fertilized eggs develop into either workers or virgin queens.

Worker

Drone

Queen

MECHANISM OF HONEY BEE MATING

Drones fly in abundance in the early afternoon and are known to congregate in drone congregation areas a good distance away from the hive. Mating between a single drone and the queen lasts less than 5 seconds, and it is often completed within 1-2 seconds. Soon after the mating the male dies. After several mating during this flight , a queen stores upto 100 million sperm within her oviduct. Queen uses only a few of these sperm at a time in order to fertilize egg throughout her life

LAYING OF EGGS

Queens lay their egg in structural oval-shaped cells, which stick to the nest ceiling. Worker honey bee fill the cell with royal jelly to prevent larva from falling. Soon-to-be- workers are fed royal jelly during first two days, while future queens are given royal jelly through out the entire larval period. Queen control the sex of their off-spring: as egg passes through the ovary into oviduct, a queen can determine weather a particular egg is fertilized or not. Unfertilized egg become drone bee, while fertilized egg develop into female worker and queen.

LIFE SPAN OF HONEY BEEThe average lifespan of a queen is three to four years drones usually die upon mating or are expelled from the hive before the winter. workers may live for a few weeks in the summer and several months in areas with an extended winter.

A BEES BEHAVIORS

A Bees natural behaviors are doing its job. The job is to collect the pollen from the flowers. After that they bring it back to the hive to make it into honey. To tell the other workers that they have found a lot of flowers for the other bees. To tell them this they use motions that are kind of like dancing. Bees are attracted to bright colors because they are looking for flowers that they get can pollen and nectar from it.