The Buzz

The Latest Buzz Have you ever wondered what life would be like inside of a bee hive? Maybe how it worked? How bees communicate? Or even what the queen bee is? Researchers have done a lot of work compiling this information for others to read.

Camilla M.

What are the different kinds of associations in a beehive?

The beehive consists of three main types of bees (related to our hierarchy of society). The top bee is the queen bee; this would be equal to our first lady. Under the queen bee are the worker bees, also called a house bee. All worker bees are female bees that were not designated to be a queen bee. The worker bees have a “pollen basket” on the back of their legs that replace the longer abdomen. It is used to collect pollen and bring it back for use in the hive. A worker bee can visit 10 flowers every minute, and a total of about 600 flowers before returning to the hive. Before a bee can manage this task, though, training is required. For a worker bee, training can take 100 days. Tasks that are vital to the foundation of the beehive include: cleaning cells for new eggs, nectar production, and pollen gathering. The next type of bee, that is an equal to the worker bee, is the drone bee. Drone bees are male bees that make up a small percentage of the hive. During the summer months, the role of a drone bee is to mate with the queen bee. After mating, the drone bee dies and a new drone bee takes his place. Drone bees live in the hive during the summer months, but they are, essentially, “kicked out” when winter comes because they consume a lot of the food supply. The queen bee, the worker bees, and the drone bees all work together to create an organized hive. The operations of the bees in the beehive are vital to their living.

Why is the queen bee so important?

The queen bee of the hive gives bees their only reproduction system. She is often mistaken for the “ruler” of the hive, but, truly, she has one of the smallest brains. The queen bee can be spotted by her abdomen; it is usually the largest of all the bees. Additionally, the colony knows the queen bee is still with them by an odor the queen bee emits.

During the spring, the queen bee lays around two thousand eggs a day. This is more than her total weight! The colony can keep a certain queen bee for three to five years, but after that a new queen bee is chosen. Besides, the existing hive gets too crowded after three to five years. So, the bees have to scout out another hive. The new hive is chosen by scouts and the former queen bee. A new queen be is chosen by being the first virgin bee to leave her cell. Once the first female bee leaves her cell, she can either kill some of the other queen bee eggs, or lead a swarm out of the hive and travel to a new hive. This is how bees create new hives, and there are separate hives for all the new queen bees that decide to leave. The queen bee eggs that are not killed make the same decision as the first queen bee made, and, eventually, one will decide to stay. After choosing a place to stay the queen bee will mate with approximately twenty male drone bee to start reproduction. Once the queen bee gets old, the cycle starts over. The queen bee is essential to the breeding of beehives all around.

What are the different types of eggs bees produce?

In the beehive there are three types of eggs that correspond with the three types of bees in the hive. The first type is the worker bee egg, which are crucial to the hive. The worker bee egg is a fertilized egg laid in a cell only five millimeters in diameter. These eggs typically take about twenty-one days to hatch. The second type of egg the queen bee lays is the male drone eggs. The eggs are placed in a seven millimeter diameter cell. The drone bee eggs usually hatch twenty-four days after being laid. The third type of egg is the queen bee egg. These eggs are acorn shaped cells that hang vertically from the top of the hive. There are usually only twenty queen bee eggs. This is a sign for the beekeeper telling him there is an impending swarm. Although it seems that all offspring require some type of mating, bees do not always need mating to produce eggs. The term for this is called parthenogenesis. Parthenogenesis is the term that describes the difference between fertilized eggs and unfertilized eggs. Fertilized eggs include mating while unfertilized eggs use parthenogenesis. In summary, there are three kinds of eggs in the beehive that correlate to the three types of bee associations.

How Do Bees Communicate?

Bee communication is one of the most intriguing in the of animal kingdom. Bees only use one form of communication. It is mainly used to tell others where food is located because all other actions of the bees are instinct. The action is made by a worker bee after returning from their pollen collection to tell the other bees where food is located for retrieval. The discovery of this profound information came from Karl von Frisch, a professor at the University of Munich in Germany, and his students. He went on to win the noble peace prize because of his discovery along with all the data he collected. Frisch figured out that the movement of the bees gave two different clues as to where the food was located outside the hive: distance and direction. There are three types of dances to the bees execute to communicate how far the food is. The first dance means the food is within fifty meters of the hive. This dance is performed by running around in many narrow circles with a sudden change in direction, then continuing to go the opposite direction in many narrow circles. This is called the round dance. The next dance shows an intermediate distance between the hive and the food (typically fifty to one hundred fifty meters from the hive). The sickle dance is performed by making a few narrow circles and then making a figure-eight to go the opposite direction for a few more narrow circles. The third dance is called the waggle dance; it tells bees the food is more than one hundred fifty meters away. The waggle dance is shown by making many figure-eights in one area. There is only one way to communicate direction. Direction is closely tied to the sun, in that the bees use the straight portion of their dance to indicate where the food is. Thus, bees are very intelligent creatures that use specific forms of communication.

Why do bees buzz?

A bee’s buzz is like that of any other insect with a high wing flapping speed. The vibrations in the air made by the up-anddown movement of a bee’s wings cause the buzz in the air. Accordingly, bees that are larger with wings that do not flap as fast, make a lower pitch than a bee whose wings flap faster. There are two kinds of bees that use different techniques for pollination. The bumble bee makes a separate buzzing sound from the honey bee because the bumble bee can rapidly shake the middle section of their body to rattle the pollen from the flowers. Honey bees, in contrast, are not as loud because they cannot carry out this process. However, many insects make a beautiful buzz similar to bees because of rapidly flapping wings.

“If the bee disappeared off the face of the earth, man would only have four years left to live.”

- Maurice Maeterlinck Works Cited: -Blackiston, Howland. "Understanding the Role of the Queen Bee in a Hive." - For Dummies. n.p. n.d. Web. 01 Mar. 2016.

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-Hiskey, Daven. "How Do Bees Produce a Queen Bee?" Today I Found Out. N.p., 17 May 2012.

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-Otis, Gard. "Why Do Bees Buzz?" Scientific American. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Mar. 2016.

-Tarpy, David R. The Honey Bee Dance Language Honey Bee Dancing, Perhaps the Most Intri guing Aspect of (n.d.): n. pag. Web. -"What Makes a Bee Buzz?" - Science Questions. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Mar. 2016.