The Life of the Honeybee

insect species number in the hundreds of thousands but for centuries one insect in particular has been consistently more useful to humanity than any other that insect is the honeybean [Music] perhaps because it benefits us so greatly we have studied the honeybee more than any other insect though many Mysteries remain we know much about its life cycle and activities the honeybee is among the most socially organized insects it lives in colonies of up to 880,000 bees three casts make up a colony the heart of the colony is the queen there is only one Queen in a hive her function is to lay eggs and She lays hundreds of them every day some of her eggs hatch into male drone bees whose sole function is to mate with the Queen the drones are stingless and incapable of feeding themselves other eggs hatch into female worker bees workers greatly outnumber drones they are smaller they can sting and as their name implies they do all the work to maintain the hive the three casts Queen drones and workers combined to form a society so complex and exactly organized that it defies our imaginations to realize that the bees Act only by [Music] Instinct in the wild honeybees usually make their home in a sheltered location such as a hollow tree [Music] but people provide many colonies with homes these days though the bees themselves are not domesticated they are still wild [Music] creatures wherever they make their home honeybees build a city of wax the workers pass through a succession of Duties as they grow older young ones perform certain tasks older ones perform others an important duty of young worker bees is to construct the cells that make up the city of wax these cells are cradles for the young and storage vaults for [Music] food the bees build three sizes of cell by far the highest percentage are small cells in which the worker bees are reared and in which food is stored they build a small number of larger cells for the drones and on certain occasions a few special Queen cells young worker bees produce wax in glands of the abdomen they extrude the wax in thin flakes plucking it from their bodies with special claws on their legs using parts of their mouths called mandibles comb Builders work the wax and apply it to the developing [Music] comb to span distances too great for a single bee some workers form Living Bridges so that others may cross [Music] the young workers hang quietly in curtains as the wax forms in their bodies here is one of Nature's great Mysteries we still do not understand how the bees create these perfect hexagonal cells many bees work on each cell and they work in total darkness yet the result is a miracle of precision that Rivals the most carefully engineered work of humans The Hive offers the be bees protection from the elements and carries them through the seasons each season brings new activities to the Colony the bees emerge from winter with their food supplies much depleted as soon as spring permits the older bees begin the search for food and water flowers give bees their food from the blossoms the bees take pollen and Nector a sweet liquid that is the raw material for honey the bees also forage for water with it they dilute the honey they use in brood raising most of the activities of these social insects are directed toward raising the young pollen is a vital requirement in the diets of the developing bees in early spring pollen is scarce because there are so few flowers but as the season progresses pollen becomes abundant the workers collect it on their hairy bodies and comb it to receptacles on their hind legs called pollen baskets the pollen pellets can be seen on some of the returning bees inside the hive the foraging worker searches for a cell for her burden of [Music] pollen bees May collect pollen and nectar on the same trip here she deposits the nectar in a honey [Music] cell she finds a pollen cell and kicks off her [Music] load another worker packs the pollen and adds honey making be bread a food for the Young an examination of the pollen pellets shows that they are rarely mixed evidence that the bees visit the same type of Blossom on each trip this is most important to our welfare because it means that as they travel from flower to flower the bees cross-pollinate many of the crops that we depend on for food apples oranges plums alala crover and dozens of other crops depend on the bee for pollination bees assume many duties in the hive some of the youngest workers are housekeepers this one removes a dead Pupa while this one prepares a cell to receive one of the Queen's eggs as the queen lays eggs a court of workers attends her constantly just what is the secret of her attraction it has been learned that the queen bee emits a complex chemical substance called a pheromone that attracts the workers pheromones are something like hormones except that hormones work internally while pheromones are emitted externally and affect other individuals here is an experiment that shows the influence of the Queen feromon the workers ignore this male drawn bee but when the Drone is dobbed with a drop of Queen feromon the worker bees react immediately and pay to the Drone the same attention that they would to the [Music] queen a healthy Queen may lay 15 00 eggs or more a day she can lay fertilized or unfertilized eggs in the smaller cells of the hive She lays fertilized eggs which will develop into the female worker [Music] bees in these larger cells She lays unfertilized eggs which will develop into the male drone bees the developing brood must be well tended young worker bees act as nurses this one takes honey dilutes it and feeds it to a developing [Music] larvae this nurse takes the pollen Rich be bread mixes it with honey and feeds it to the young The Brood temper is critical and if it becomes too high the bees fan their wings to cool it foragers bring water into the hive which as it evaporates further lowers the temperature when the larvi are fully grown worker bees cap the cells with wax this is a com of capped worker brood [Music] inside the capped cell this lava spins a delicate cocoon in which the marvelous process of metamorphosis will take [Music] place the pupa develops until the metamorphosis is complete drones take 24 days to mature Queens take 16 days and workers like the one we're watching take 21 [Music] days the worker cuts the wax and emerges from its cell she will feed and rest for a few hours and then take up a succession of Duties first within the hive and then outside it one of her duties will be to guard The Hive these guards challenge a strange worker The Stranger is submissive and if she has Provisions she may be permitted to enter intent on stealing honey this yellow jacket will be killed probably at the cost of a guard's own life the sting of a worker is barbed and usually in trying to remove it from its victim the bee tears out its own vital organs when workers sting they emit a powerful substance called an alarm pheromone in this experiment a dob of the pheromone is placed on the cloth and many bees leave The Hive to see what is wrong older bees act as foragers summer is their busiest season blossoms are plentiful the workers collect nectar and store it inside a part of their body called the honey stomach in the honey stomach also called a crop the nectar begins to undergo the change into honey when the honeybee finds a nectar source of Rich Supply it returns to the hive and performs one of the most remarkable examples of instinctive behavior on record it does an excited dance on the comb the dance tells the other bees the location of the nectar source here we see the round dance it tells the following bees that there is a good Supply quite close to the hive the dancing bee usually gives out sips of nectar which helps to identify the source the character of the dance changes as the distance to the source of food increases now the dance consists of a number of turns and a straight line waggle dance the straight line portion of the dance tells the other bees which direction to follow and the number of turns in a given time tells them how far to go they can now fly directly to the source this Behavior has been called the language of the bees the foraging bees return to the hive and transfer the honey from their crops to Hive bees The Hive bees continue the transformation of nectar into honey The Hive bees deposit the honey into cells [Music] the Fanning bees circulate the air in the hive lowering the moisture content of the honey when the cells are full of honey and the moisture content is right the workers cap the honey for future use [Music] during a season the bees collect pounds of honey it takes many bees to collect a single pound and in the process they fly a combined distance equal to twice around the world meanwhile more and more bees emerge from their pupil cells every day until the hive is overcrowded the honeybees have an instinctive mechanism for controlling the population Within in the hive the mechanism is called swarming when they swarm many members of The Colony including the queen depart to find a new home before they swarm the workers build Queen cells in which new Queens will be reared the developing Queens receive a special diet of royal jelly a remarkable substance produced in the heads of the worker bees with this special diet alone the larvae which otherwise would have become a worker becomes a queen different in physical structure and instinctive [Music] Behavior with the future of the colony more or less assured with the developing Queens the bees Gorge themselves with honey and swarm out of the hive to seek a new home accompanied by the old Queen at the end of their flight the bees form a cluster around the queen in some sheltered spot the Swarm hangs quietly for a day or two while scalp bees go out in all directions in search of a home site the bees are relatively docile when in a cluster SC turn and do the directional dances to indicate their chosen [Music] locations as more and more bees go to the various sites a sort of consensus is reached and finally the entire surface of the cluster boils into a frantic breaking dance and then as the on signal the cluster breaks and the bees take off with their Queen to their new home if the shelter is suitable the Swarm accepts it readily now another of the wonderful pheromones is brought into play the Fanning bees emit the trail pheromone directing the Swarm to the new Hive entrance back in the old Hive a dramatic encounter will take place one of the Virgin Queens emerges from her cell the Queens some of which are still in their cells emit a piping sound the first instinct of the Virgin Queen is to destroy her royal sisters unlike the workers the queen can sting again and again for her Stinger is not Barbed she tears a hole in the nearest Queen's cell and stings one rival before she can escape but she is too late to kill her second sister in the cells this Virgin Queen escapes and a royal battle begins it is a fight to the death because each Hive will support only one Queen this queen has received a mortal wound and soon will die while this this one will mother a new generation of workers and drones but first if she is to produce workers she must leave The Hive to receive the male sperm incapable of work the drones exist for the single purpose of mating with a queen they may mate with the queen of their own Hive or with a queen from another Hive but they can mate only once with the help of the powerful Queen feromon the drones find the Queens high up in the air the drones die immediately after mating the queen returns to the hive to lay thousands of eggs she will never have to mate again and can continue her activities through her lifetime [Music] the Mellow days of autumn spur the workers to new efforts as they prepare for winter by adding to their store of honey and we rape a harvest made richer by the work of the bees soon Frost touches the blossoms and the colony must practice new economies the idle drones are no longer needed when they are driven from The Hive to die [Music] winter reveals another amazing adaptation of the bees while all other insects migrate hibernate or are killed by the frost the honeybees actually control their environment they form a close cluster in the hive with the queen at the middle the bees movements release metabolic heat that the cluster retains as the bees at the edge of the cluster become chilled the bees inside change places with them and the colony survives the cold winter on warm days of early spring the bees leave The Hive to rid themselves of [Music] waste some never return [Applause] another spring an Awakening world and the wonderful life cycle begins a new [Music] a