There are many species of bees, but only four of these are honey-bees. Three of these species are Asian bees:
Apis Florea,
Apis Indica and
Apis Dorsata. The fourth species is
Apis Mellifera. The two Latin words mean "Bearer of carrier of sweets or nectar".
Apis Mellifera originate from Africa and Europe. They were imported into North and south America, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and China. These countries had no honey-bees of their own.
Apis Mellifera was successfully introduced into
Australia in 1822, when the early settlers realized the poor results obtained with fruit crops was due to a lack of pollination. Earlier attempts to transport bees from England failed because of the long sea journey of approximately six month duration. The honey bee is the main pollinating agent of most horticultural and
agricultural crops and therefore is of great economic importance in these industries. Other pollinating a
gencies such as wind, individual insects and birds are not very effective when it comes to mass pollinating.
The three main races within
Apis Mellifera used in commercial honey production are
Italian from the Mediterranean area,
Caucasian from mountain areas of
Russia and
Carniolan from Northern Europe. The Black Bee,
Apis Mellifera Mellifera from the British Isles and Northern Europe was first introduced from England, but has fallen out of
favour because it stings readily. The Black Bee has a nervous nature, running around its combs and that trait makes it difficult to find the queen.
Commercial bee
keepers need to be able to find the queen for proper management of their apiary.
The honey bee is a social insect and lives in a large family unit called a colony. A colony of bees consist of only one queen bee, some male bees called drones and thousands of worker bees that are females. Worker bees are the field bees that collect the nectar from a wide range of flowers from ground flora, small plants, shrubs and trees. Nectar gathered by the bees has a water content of about 80%. The bees drive off the moisture by fanning their wings to create an airflow across the honey comb that reduces the water content to 17%. The honey has anti-bacterial properties.
The queen bee is the mother of all the bees in the colony. In the first few days of her life she leaves the hive and goes on a mating flight to a drone
congregation area and mates with one or more drones while flying. She receives and stores enough spermatozoa to last for the duration of her egg-laying life of two or three years. Honey bees belong to the insect world of Parthenogenesis. Unfertilized eggs produce drones that have 16 chromosomes. The queen bee has the full complement of 32
chromosomes. Worker bees have 32 chromosomes but their eggs, if they lay any, have only 16 chromosomes. That is workers can only produce drones. The queen usually fertilizes each egg as she lays it in the bottom of a cell in the honeycomb. The eggs mostly develop into female worker bees. In spring when breeding takes place, she will lay unfertilized eggs in drone cells that grow into males that propagate the genetic message that adds variety to the honey
bee genome, which helps the honey bee survive. The worker bees make drone cells larger than normal cells. The queen detects the difference and doesn't fertilize the egg. The question is "Which of the bees control the hive?" Is it the queen or the worker-bees? A drone bee emerges in 24 days from the time the egg is laid.
For more information on bee genetics try this link
http://members.aol.com/queenb95/genetics.html. Honey bee genetics is a
fascinating subject.
Worker bees and queens are bred from the same type of fertilized egg. Worker bees hatch from the
same honeycomb cells used to store honey. Drone cells are also used for honey storage. However, queen-bees are raised in special cells that hang down from the face of the honeycomb. Worker bees emerge in 21 days. Queen bees emerge in 16 days. If a hive loses its queen bee for any reason and they have some new eggs less than three days old, they can have a new queen in 16 days. Isn't that remarkable?
Since both worker bees and queen bees can be raised from the same egg how does the hive manage to turn one into a queen bee? The answer is in the way the young larva is fed. The workers and drones are fed from white creamy
larval food after they hatch in 72 hours. The queen larva is fed Royal Jelly that looks the same as ordinary
larval food. Its ingredients are similar but Royal Jelly has less protein more sugar and is thicker than normal
larval food. Royal Jelly has more energy. The queen larva is fed for five days and then its cell is sealed. In contrast the worker larva is fed for six days before its cell is sealed.
The Royal Jelly fed to the queen larva promotes the full development of the queen-bee's
ovarioles in her ovary. The better her
ovarioles the better egg layer the queen bee. If the queen bee is lost through accident and there are no fertile
egg in the
hive the worker bees will lay eggs that produce drones and the colony is doomed to die out without human intervention.
Honey bees will set up house in any sheltered hole that protects them from the weather and predators. They will establish colonies in hollow limbs of trees or in a cupboard, a wall cavity or even a
chimney. These colonies are known as feral and the bees can be a nuisance. However, there are not many feral colonies of
Apis Mellifera. There are colonies of little native bees here where I live in
Taradale because I've seen the little worker bees busy collecting nectar and pollen from my garden plants. These native bees are only about one tenth the size of
Apis Mellifera.
Swarming honey bees will not generally settle in a hollow that is occupied. Honey bees will protect their colony and stores of honey. Worker bees have a barbed sting at the end of their abdomens and they will perish if they use it. In contrast the queen bee has a
barb less sting and she can sting multiple times like a wasp. The hive entrance is guarded by guard bees that examine every bee that comes into the hive. The whole hive of some 50,000 bees can be summoned to defend it. The word beehive can mean a box or container with or
without bees. Man made beehives dimensions are 300 millimetres wide by 460 millimetres long and 240 millimetres deep. The boxes usually made of pine 20 millimetres thick. The boxes have to be protected from the weather by a few coats of paint. The boxes are usually painted white to reflect the sun on a hot summer day. Bee colonies at Lightning Ridge in outback New South Wales, have to live with summer temperatures that reach 50 degrees Celsius in the shade of a
coolabah tree during the summer. A good and nearby water supply is absolutely essential to the welfare of bees.
The painted pine boxes are filled with removable frames that the bees use to store honey and raise young. The box dimensions above will
accommodate eight frames. The hives are opened regularly for inspection to make sure the bees are not diseased or infested with a pest and to manipulate the colony. For example many beekeepers raise their own new queen bees during the spring. The colony will replace its queen as she reaches the end of her egg-laying life. The bees detect that the queen is about to run out of spermatozoa. She will be replaced to guarantee the
persistence of the colony. This event is known as
supersedure. When the new queen bee begins to lay the old queen bee is finished.
During the winter the bees live on honey stores they stockpiled during the previous spring, summer and
autumn. The beekeeper must make sure that he leaves enough honey for the bees to survive the winter. Also the entrances to hives should be
diminished during the winter to make it easier for the bees to guard it. The bees know when spring is coming and they forage whenever they can. I have seen them forage when the temperature is about 12 degrees Celsius. The winter bees are fairly old bees. During the active months the life of worker-bee is about six weeks. By then their wings are worn out.
Depending on the temperature and the weather, the queen bee starts laying more eggs about two weeks before spring. When spring arrives she ramps up the number of eggs she lays depending on the signals she gets from the worker bees about the amount of pollen and nectar available. I have a good crop of cape weed that the bees love. It provides good quality pollen that is turned into
larval food. Now it is one month before the official start of spring according to us. It is still cold and wet but the cape weed is looking good. When the worker bees first leave their cells they do hive duties for the first three weeks. They are nurse-bees, guard-bees, cleaning-bees and wax-building-bees. After this they begin field duties, collecting nectar and pollen for as long as the day's temperature is above about 15 degrees Celsius and daylight lasts.
While the bees are collecting pollen they are fertilizing the plants. That's why I have a good crop of cape weed.
Agriculture is dependent on bee
pollination. My fruit trees depend on my bees and so do the local
eucalyptus. Large numbers of bees are used to pollinate fruit trees, almond trees, canola crops and many other commercial plant
varieties. As well as honey, bees produce beeswax that humans use in other products. Honey bees are
fascinating creatures and are an important part of our lives. They have been around a lot longer than us as well.
Some of the material for this article was taken from The Australian Bee Journal, July 2007. I thank Eddie
Moylan from Seymour for writing "Today in the Apiary". Eddie is an experienced commercial
beekeeper.
