If you're
beekeeping this, hopefully the following information is useful to you. At the height of summer when food is plentiful a functional mature bee colony will consist of a queen bee, a few hundred male drone bees and roughly about 40,000 to 50,000 female worker bees. In this article we are going to look at the incredible life of the female worker bee.
When you look and see
honey bees hovering around your garden going from flower to flower you are in fact observing female worker bees from a local colony hard at work. As well as collecting nectar they also look after all matters relating to the overall well being of the colony itself with the exception of egg laying (only the queen gets this honour).
Their sole purpose in life is to protect and ensure the survival of the colony. Using their own complex communication system they work together in unity to this end. Each worker bees personal responsibilities will change with age but usually involves the use of their own wax glands to build the intricate honeycomb.
It is fascinating to think that workers communicate with each other using touch, smell and vibrations. A gland called the Nasonov gland which sits at the end of the abdomen emits a pheromone (scent) that binds the colony together. A worker bee can often be observed at the opening to a colony with her bottom in the air, beating her wings quickly in order to waft the scent into the atmosphere which acts like a tracking beacon and guides her sister worker bees back home.
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