She may lay an egg fertilized with semen or an unfertilized egg. Inside the large, long abdomen of the queen bee, are ovaries containing eggs. Over time, eggs will be released from the ovary and travel down the oviduct. A mated queen has semen stored inside a special structure in her abdomen.
This is called a spermatheca. Here over million sperm are kept alive and viable until needed. As the egg travels through her body, the queen has the option to release semen and fertilize the egg — or not.
The honey bee colony requires the efforts of thousands of individuals that work together to sustain the colony. Where do those thousands of bees come from? And, why do we never see any baby bees? During egg laying, the queen bee measures the size of each of the honeycomb cells. If the cell is a regular worker bee size, she will lay a fertilized egg into that cell. This egg will become a female worker bee.
However, if the cell is larger and meant for the slightly larger male bee, the queen will lay an unfertilized egg. No semen will be released as the egg travels through her body.
Drone bees or male bees develop from unfertilized eggs. From these eggs, the work force of the colony will develop and take on all the responsibilities of the hive. A honey bee is an insect.
And like all insects it has 4 distinctive life stages. The development stages of honey bee s varies in length or number of days. Each type of bee will pass through these 4 stages of development : egg, larva, pupa and adult.
But the time it takes to reach adulthood is slightly different. I think it is interesting to note that the queen takes less time to reach adulthood than the other 2 types of bees. The total life span or age of each type of bee also differs. Worker bees live for about 6 weeks during the summer. But over the Winter months, workers in the hive can live much longer — up to 6 months.
The Drone bee male honey bee lives for a couple of months during the warm season. Drone bees do not usually live through the Winter.
They are expelled from the hive in late Fall. When a honey bee colony needs a new queen, they can produce one. The colony must have very young larva from a fertilized egg. These young larvae are fed a special rich diet. This causes them to develop into sexually reproductive females. The biggest difference, however, is just that solitary females are all fertile, whereas, with the eusocial bees, only the queens can reproduce. Honeybees are probably one of the most social bee species. Their whole colony acts like an organism, where each bee must play a part to ensure its survival.
The males are hovering around in mid-air , where the queen will meet them, individually, in the middle. A drone soon flies close enough and the mating begins. She will mate with about 20 to 25 drones, where some might be her brothers. One of the reasons she mates with so many is to ensure that most of them are from other colonies. These will last her a lifetime and she can lay up to 2, eggs per day on this stash.
Bumblebees do it a bit differently. The males will fly in the air, secreting a chemical meant to attract the females. Their technique, however, varies between species. Some drones circulate a specific area with a prominent object, such as a tree or large rock. Much like the honeybee drones, bumblebee drones only serve one purpose and that is to mate.
The queen bee lays two kinds of eggs —fertilized and non-fertilized eggs. The non-fertilized eggs will develop into drones, while the fertilized will grow into female individuals Winston, This determination is called gender determination. Afterwards, the female individuals can develop into queens or workers, depending on their nutrition during their larva stage. Larvae that grow to become queen bees are fed exclusively with copious amounts of royal jelly during the entire nourishment period, whereas larvae that develop into workers during the first three days are fed with very small amounts of royal jelly and the rest of the days with royal jelly, pollen and honey.
This occurs when the colony splits into two parts. In the Cape bee, female worker bees are able to reproduce asexually: they lay eggs that are essentially fertilised by their own DNA, which develops into new worker bees. Such bees are also able to invade the nests of other bees and continue to reproduce in this fashion, eventually taking over the foreign nests, a behaviour called social parasitism.
Bumblebees do it a bit differently. The males will fly in the air, secreting a chemical meant to attract the females. Their technique, however, varies between species.
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