Columbia Gorge Beekeepers Association
Human babies from the moment of birth continue to mature as each day passes. Rapid growth and coordination occur with a doubling of their weight by four months and tripling by the one-year point. The child’s brain continues significant development: Gross motor skills like sitting and crawling, fine motor skills such as grasping, development of language from cooing to first words (mama). All under the loving, nourishing care of adult parents as they guide their child through these initial stages.
The honey bee colony is comprised of three castes: 1) Queen, 2) Drone (male), and 3) Worker (female). Both the Queen and Worker are developed from a fertilized egg. The Queen’s reproduction consists of two differing eggs — fertilized (female) and unfertilized (male, with single strand DNA).
The Drone’s sole purpose within the colony is the fertilization of a queen, not from it’s own hive but with Queens of nearby hives. The drones are only members of the hive from about April through July, the period most likely to have newly developed virgin queen’s hatch.
The Drones exit the hive in the afternoon flying some distance from their own colony in a tornado-like flight pattern in anticipation of a virgin queen passing their way. Should a queen pass nearby, one detects the other, and the queen changes course straight upward as fast as she can fly. In typical “nature fashion” to have only the strongest drones able to catch her. Mating occurs while in flight with the drone dying upon completion of the mating.
The Queen serves two functions: Dispersing her Queen Mandibular Pheromone and laying eggs.
The Worker, upon first emerging from her brood cell, immediately commences her duties as part of the bee tribe. She performs the bulk of duties within the hive.
Two opposing forces dictate the changes in duties of the Worker. Vitellogenin, an egg yolk protein, and Juvenile Hormone operate like a seesaw, with the Vitellogenin being prominent from hatching diminishing slowly until the third week of life as Juvenile Hormone becomes dominant.
The first three weeks of the Worker’s life involve duties within the hive, while the final three weeks are foraging for nectar, pollen, water, or propolis. Upon first emergence, the worker’s first task is to clean her own brood cell followed by cells adjacent to hers.
The first stage of the honey bee lifecycle is the pupa. The second stage, larvae, finds it developing a cocoon just prior to transitioning into a pupa where all the body parts are developed. She continues to perform cell cleaning from about Day 1 through Day 3 of her adult life.
She then shifts into House Duties. The Worker from Day 4 through about Day 12 functions as a nurse, feeding the larvae. The larval stage is essentially a feeding stage, being fed every two seconds, growing about fifteen hundred times in size in about six days. All brood nourishment must be imbibed during the larval stage as the cell is capped with wax preventing further access on Day 9.
She is supported in the development of her Mandibular and Hypopharyngeal glands which combine pollen with the enzymes produced within these glands to create Royal Jelly, a super nourishment fed to all Caste larvae for the initial two or three days of the larval stage. The Drone and Worker larvae then shift to being fed Bee Bread (pollen liquefied by a drop of nectar and bee saliva). The Queen larvae is fed Royal Jelly throughout the Queen’s six days of the larval stage.
The Worker evolves in her duties from Day 7 through Day 12, becoming a Queen Attendant to attend to feeding, grooming and cleaning her majesty so the Queen may fulfill her role as the colony egg layer without distractions.
Day 12 through Day 18 Workers, using special glands located on their underside of their abdomens, produce wax. This production requires copious amounts of honey.
The final days of the “in-hive” duties entail dehumidifying nectar (70% water) into honey (15% water), guarding the hive entrance, or attending to cleaning of other parts of the hive of debris, dead bees, and other messes. Workers are most fastidious in maintaining a clean house.
The final three weeks of the Worker’s life are consumed with foraging for nectar, pollen, water or propolis. The Worker essentially flies herself to death. The life of the Worker is dependent on the distance she travels and the environmental conditions (wind, moisture) from the hive.
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The Columbia Gorge Beekeepers Association meets on the third Wednesday of each month, http://www.gorgebeekeepers.org/, at the Hood River Extension, 2990 Experiment Station at 6:00 PM. A different subject is presented by an Entomologists or experienced beekeeper. All are welcome. Visitors may attend in person or via Zoom. You may reach out to the club for login information: admin@gorgebeekeepers.org.
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