A look at the life cycle of honeybees

I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the life cycle of the honeybee. Most people are amazed at how organized they are. For example, how do honeybees know to make every single cell six-sided, and the ones on the back which make up the other side of the honeycomb precisely off-set to prevent a rupture all the way through! Honeybees will actually link themselves to each other to measure an area before deciding just how big to make their honeycomb! But to properly look at the life cycle, we must begin with the bee that makes it all happen.

Let’s start with the queen. Each hive has only one. All of the worker bees are female. There are a few male bees, which we call drones, but their sole purpose in life is to mate with the unmated queen to give her a lifetime supply of materials for egg production. Once she has successfully mated, she will not mate again. Therefore, although a few more drones will be made, they may not necessarily be used. They do not forage, and must be fed. When resources in the hive are scarce, you guessed it; they are the first to go.

Once the queen has been inseminated, she will begin laying eggs – up to 2,000 a day, but we commonly see more on the order 1,200 a day. She may lay as many as 200,000 over a season. After three years, a queen will begin to slow down, and that is when the workers decide a new queen is needed; they realize the importance of keeping the number in the hive steady. The workers prepare special cells for ordinary eggs, and only feed the larvae in those cells royal jelly, a substance milked from a gland in the worker bee’s head. This creates a queen. Worker bee larvae receive pollen and nectar instead, much of which has been stored from other bees that’ve been out foraging and have brought home the groceries, which hopefully haven’t been poisoned. The new queen emerges after 16 days, kills off the competition of other emerging queens – they usually have a back-up or two, and she leaves the hive on her maiden voyage to mate with the drones. Once out, she is not very particular about whom she mates with, and it is possible she will mate with a species of bee that would not be desirable in a backyard hive. Many hobbyists and backyard beekeepers import docile bees for use in populated areas, so to prevent their hives from becoming aggressive, they will re-queen every year or two with a queen of the same species to prevent this from happening. What happens to the old queen? The beekeeper will finish her off, or if this happens in nature, several things might happen. One, they might fight to the death, or as in the case of a stalemate, one of the queens might take half the hive and leave for destinations unknown…but back to the honeybee.

The worker bee begins her life as an egg for the first three days, and then becomes a feeding larva, being tended to by other worker bees. She will spend about six days feeding before she spins her cocoon and as a pupae she will transform into a honeybee beneath the closed cap of her cell. This process takes another 11 days, so on or about day 21, she knocks the cap loose, climbs out, cleans out her cell so it can be reused, and spends the next 24 – 48 hours keeping other brood warm. Now that she has her land legs, she’ll spend the next 36 hours feeding older larvae, and then she’ll spend the next 6 days feeding the younger larvae, which is more demanding. The following six days she’ll spend producing wax, building honeycomb for further storage, and transporting food around the hive. Now that she is strong, she will spend the next four days guarding the hive entrance, and then afterwards, she will spend the rest of her life, somewhere between 15 and 25 days, foraging the fields for pollen and nectar. So, when you see a honeybee out pollinating flowers, this is an older bee, who has already gone through a rigorous training program within the hive; a bee who has learned all of the jobs necessary to make the hive run…impressive, huh?