Normally there is only one and she will battle with any other queen intruding or introduced into the hive in a stinging to the death duel. However, in large hives, particularly during the spring, beekeepers see more than one. Sometimes it is thought that the mother queen is being superseded by her daughter queen and eventually disappears. It may be that she duels with her daughter or that the workers eliminate her. The other time more than one queen can be found in a hiv

Yes, if the bee that stings is a worker bee, she will die shortly after stinging because the sting assembly separates from her body leaving an open wound. The sting assembly includes the stinger shaft, the glands and the muscles that pump the venom through the stinger. A queen bee survives after stinging and may sting repeatedly because her stinger is less barbed, allowing her to withdraw it without injury to her body.

The stinger should be removed as soon as possible by scraping it out, such as by using a finger nail or credit card. Squeezing the stinger, and attached venom pouch, may cause the release of more venom in to the skin. Do not continue to scrape or irritate the sting area because you may actually push bacteria on the skin surface into the sting wound and start an infection. One particular potentially troublesome bacteria found on normal skin is Staphylococcus aureus, comple

Bees secrete an anesthetic, 2-heptanone, from their mandibular glands. When guard bees break through the outer body covering of intruders, this secretion can enter the intruder’s body and cause temporary paralysis.

The armor of a bee is in overlapping segments. The abdomen of the bee has one row of rigid overlapping plate on its dorsal side (back) and another set on its ventral side (belly). Each dorsal plate segment overlaps its ventral counterpart. Each piece is rigid but joined by membranes allowing what we see as flexible movement, in this case “panting.”.

Bees can not pant; they don’t have lungs. However, bees do have membranes in their abdomen that act as diaphragms and aid in the flow of hemolymph inside their body, and aid in the movement of air through tracheal tubes and air sacs.

They hear with the subgenual organs on all 6 legs as well as Johnston’s organs on the antennae. Their brains processing the sensory input from that many receptive organs on the 6 legs would probably give them the direction of a vibration source, and therefore of “sound”. However, a bee’s brain comparing the vibrations received by the Johnston’s organs of the two separate antennae is probably the easiest way to think of them as perceiving the direction of sound, much as we us

Two ways: from the production and consumption of bee bread and from the jelly fed to them by young bees at the jelly producing stage of their progression in duties, polyethism. This is the stage at which those young adults mix the secretions of their hypopharyngeal and mandibular glands, varying the secretion mix according to whether they are feeding larvae, queen, drones or workers. Bee bread is the other way that older larvae and adults get their protein. The bees fer

All castes (worker, queen, drone) emit pheromones. The tarsal gland secretion mentioned in a previous post also contains a trail pheromone, which workers leave on the forage they visit or at the hive entrance. This pheromone helps workers home in on the forage they may have found following the instructions of a waggle dance back at the hive. Returning to the hive, those foragers may again receive the homing signal of that pheromone at the hive entrance, along with others.

The 2 claws or hooks on each pretarsus (end segment of each leg), grip rough or penetrable surfaces so that makes it easy to move anywhere on those surfaces, including upside down. On slippery surfaces, a flexible pad between those 2 claws forms a sort of “suction” against those smooth surfaces with a secretion from a gland called the Arnhart or tarsal or arolium gland.

Adult bees can consume nectar directly but nectar is basically sugar water, plant sugar, but is almost completely carbohydrates. Just as every animal needs protein, so do all the bees in the hive. The protein is in the pollen. Bees are extremely efficient gatherers and storers of pollen. So what’s the problem with bees directly consuming pollen? There are obstacles: a “wasp waist”, the design of a bee’s gut, and the structure of pollen itself. Bee larvae don’t develop th

Well, actually those secretions from various glands of the young worker bees are mixed into different forms of “royal jelly”. The queen is fed one form, worker larvae another, drone larvae a slightly different form and so on. Even adults such as returning foragers receive some of this jelly as a “reward” from the young adult nurse or house bees.

Apis mellifera seems to be a species obsessed with efficiency and temporal polyethism is efficient. Why is temporal polyethism so efficient in worker honey bees? Other social insect species and other social animal have division of labor. Some individuals may even perform multiple tasks in their lifetimes. However, A. mellifera raises this to a whole new level by continuing to change physiologically as an adult, after full metamorphosis (egg, larva, pupa, adult stage

Honey bees have taken social behavior to the highest level seen in the animal world. Social cooperation to the Extreme! Honey bees are eusocial, that means not just gregarious or semi social, but fully social. This is social behavior carried to the max! There are benefits to such social behavior: survival of the species, protection from predators, etc. Whenever Apis mellifera takes on a project, they show themselves to be masters of efficiency. Look at the geometry and

7 out of 8 swarms are expected to not survive their first winter unless captured and rehived by a beekeeper. A few beekeepers in rural or outlying areas feel feel to let their hives swarm each year, for at least 2 reasons. First, this means that their hive will requeen itself each year with a young robust queen. Second, those swarms are just "returning to nature," right? Wrong, it's basically a death sentence unless that swarm is rehived by a beekeeper. For more about f

Most 'feral' swarms are escapees from managed hives. The closer you are to commercial apiaries and to the high density of hobby beekeepers in the Puget Sound area, the more likely you are to capture another beekeeper's swarm. Free bees is good, right? Not always. If the beekeeper was not managing hives well, feeding if needed, and treating for mites, those free bees may not be a reproductive swarm but may be absconding from unsurvivable conditions: hunger or Varroa levels so

The European honey bee, aka the Western honey bee, aka Apis mellifera, aka our beloved honey bee, evolved with European plants over millennia, so it should not surprise us that it pollinates them so well. Many of our favorite foods we brought from the Old World and also many weeds, often plants we now consider invasives. It makes sense that honey bees pollinate those better than natives. Some of the invasives are important pollen or nectar sources at various times of the year

Dr. Samuel Ramsey showed this feeding on adults as well as on bee larvae in the capped stage and presented his research in the youtube presentation: Varroa feed on Fat Body - lecture at the INIB honey show 2019 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2plL5NIRcw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2plL5NIRcw This means that Varroa do not have a "phoretic stage" when they are attached to adult honey bees because a phoretic stage does not include feeding on the host used as transpo

Until recently, it was widely published that V. destructor fed on the hemolymph ("bee blood") of capped bee larvae as they metamorphosed into adults. Under the wax capping of the pupal stage, the Varroa females feed on the bee larvae and lay their eggs which develop, mature and mate before the newly formed adult bees emerge. However, it is not the "blood" of the larvae on which the Varroa feed, but on the fat bodies of the larvae. The Varroa insert their mouthparts into

Once Apis mellifera returns to brood raising after its winter brood break, the workers must maintain temps in the low 90s F to keep eggs, larvae and pupae alive. An Apis mellifera colony maintains its body temp in winter, not going into hibernation or dormancy or lowering body temp to survive, but staying active and actually generating and holding heat with a clustering behavior unknown in other insects. At the center of the cluster, the queen must be kept close to 68-70 deg