Honeybee: A Social Insect (Revised)

[Music] [Music] the honeybee is probably the most important of our useful insects honey bees are social insects living together in societies as they've done for millions of years since long before Human Society began some wasps are social insects too and all termites and all ants this is a natural Hive a honeybee Society bees constructed this Hive in a hollow tree bees are also raised in artificial hives cultivated for the wax and honey they produce a healthy honeybee colony is made up of about 60,000 bees each social insect has a special job in its Society one be is much larger than the rest the Queen the Queen's main job is to lay eggs she might lay as many as 500,000 in a lifetime of two to three years watch as she deposits one egg in this cell most of the eggs that the queen lays hatch into larve eat that will become male drones or female workers most of the bees in a hive are workers during the summer the first third of their lives the workers feed and care for the newly hatched larv and clean the hive worker bees begin their jobs in the hive when they're about 3 days old at the age of 5 days workers start producing a substance called royal jelly and feed it to the young larv when this nursing stage ends a worker turns to other tasks now the worker becomes a builder these workers are making the Combs of the hive the worker instinctively builds each new cell in a perfect six-sided shape a hexagon these cells make up the [Music] Combs the worker builds the cell with wax which is produced in its own body and stored in eight pockets on its stomach some of the worker bees become guards they protect the hive against anything that tries to approach it only the workers and the Queen have stingers no matter how big an enemy is the Bold guards will attack and sting it another task of the workers is to fill cells with the nectar which will ripen into honey they also fill some cells with pollen and add a little honey to make a food called be bread for the larv the last 2third of workers lives are spent working outside the hive as foragers collecting nectar and pollen the nectar that the workers gather from flowers will be mixed with chemicals produced by their bodies and slow changed into honey in the [Music] hive bees draw out the nectar with their long tongues that can extend deep into a flower a nectar is stored in the honey stomach of the bee this search for a nectar and pollen helps many flowers fruit trees and farm crops to reproduce as the worker moves around in the flower pollen dust sticks to its fuzzy [Music] body the bee moves from flower to flower on the same or other plants each time it enters a flower some pollen rubs off the bee onto the pistol this pollinates the plant Farmers have used bees as pollinators for thousands of years bees carry the pollen back to The Hive in smooth areas on their back legs that are surrounded by stiff hairs these are called pollen baskets and when these pollen baskets are full the pollen May weigh about a third as much as the bee itself another job of the female worker bees is to feed the males the drones there are several hundred drones in the hive the male bees have only one job to mate with the queen all the drones fly out with the queen for a single mating flight but the queen mates only with about 10 of them the long flight exhausts the drones and all of them die after this mating flight the queen has fed as much royal jelly as she wishes then the queen lays eggs fastening them to sell walls with a glue that her body makes eggs that will hatch into female workers are fertile male drone eggs are not a cell's size and shape may be the clues that tell a queen which kind to lay as the eggs hatch into larve each one is fed the royal jelly at first those that are to be workers or drones are fed royal jelly only for a short time constant feeding of the royal jelly to a queen causes her to grow larger and develop in a different way from the other larv the workers enlarge the cells of the larve that will develop into Queens these cells hang downwards from the comb after feeding the larv for a certain number of days the workers seal their cells with wax in a few days the larvae spins a thin cocoon about itself now it is called a pupa the inactive Pupa its cell capped with wax slowly changes into an adult 21 days from the time the eggs were laid the adult bees chew their way through the wax and emerge ending their complete metamorphosis from egg to larvae to Pupa to adult their old cells will often be used again before the new Queen emerges the old Queen and about 3/4 of the workers leave The Hive in search of a new one this is called swarming the old queen and the bees that have gone with her begin to live in a new home the workers begin their search for food again they load their honey stomachs with nectar and return to the new [Music] Hive they dance in a variety of patterns to communicate certain information to other workers the dance shows that there is more food where this food came from and how to find it [Music] back in the old Hive a new Queen is about to emerge she cuts off the wax cap and frees herself immediately the new Queen searches for the other Royal cells now she stings their occupants to death for there can only be one Queen in a hive after mating she returns to the hive continuing the life cycle of the honeybee one of the oldest social insects on [Music] Earth