When I think about honeybees, I really only think about the honey that they make. But how do the bees work together and make the honey? Does the queen have any influence over the bees? But lets begin with what I do know. Everyone knows that bee colonies can’t function without their queen. And every bee has their own job to do. Thousands and thousands of bees depend on each other and most importantly on the queen. That would be pretty stressful as a queen to know that if you don’t do your job correctly you could kill your whole colony! Unfortunately, that assumption is wrong. The queen is not the ruler of the colony. Beekeeping Like A Girl explains that bee colonies are more like a democratic system. The queen doesn’t have to communicate to the hive because the functioning of the bees are due to an instinctive chemical called pheromones. Queen bees don’t really have the typical queen duties. There are different types of bees in the colony: workers, drones, and a queen. The queen mates with some drones which are male bees. An interesting fact is that she only mates once in her life. The queen can lay up to 1,500 eggs a day! She may not be the monarch of the hive, but she sure has her work cut out for her. A queen lays fertilized eggs which are worker (female) bees and unfertilized eggs which are drone bees. Most queens can lay well eggs for 3 years. When a queen bee loses the ability to properly lay eggs, the colony will put another queen in her place. What I didn’t know was that the workers make more than one queen. It makes sense now that I think about it, and it is pretty clever on their part. Unfortunately for the queens, they kill each other until one is left and that is the only time that a queen will use her stinger states BeeKeeping Like A Girl. The queen may not be the dictator of the hive, but the colony knows that the queen is a significant key to their survival. The queen has a ‘court’ of worker bees that do everything. They feed her and clean her, anything you can imagine they probably do. It is believed that if the queen didn’t have her ‘court’ of workers, she would most likely die and that is how important all the bees are to the colony. The bees have a very interesting and unique way of being able to communicate with each other. It is truly remarkable as to how they can depend on each other.
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AuthorHello, My name is Emma Meiss. I'm a senior at Dunlap High School. This second semester I will be writing about the importance of bees. ArchivesCategories |