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🐝... Beekeeping For Everyone! - #3 - Honeybee Castes

bushkillPosted for Everyone to comment on, 6 years ago3 min read
Honeybees are a social insects and live in a colony. The colony uses a caste system to ensure the survival of the colony. The castes consist of Queen, worker and drone as seen from left to right in the photo below.
madegood.org

🥚 What's in a Egg?

The queen is the 'mother' of the hive as she lays all the eggs. But what determines what the egg will be? When a queen mates she stores the sperm in a special receptacle called the spermatheca. When she lays and egg, she decides whether to fertilize the egg with sperm stored in the spermatheca. An unfertilized egg will become a drone which is a male bee. If the queen decides to fertilize the egg, it will become a female bee, either a queen or a worker. The size of the cell determines if she fertilizes the egg or not. Larger cells will be drones. Photo below shows drone brood on the left and worker brood on the right.


cookevillebeekeepers.com

Depending on what the larvae of a fertilized egg is fed determines if it will be a queen or a worker.

For the first 3 days after an egg hatches, it is fed royal jelly, which is a white milk-like glandular secretion from nurse bees. The photo below shows larvae floating in royal jelly.


Wikipedia

A larvae destined to be a queen bee is continued on royal jelly until the cell is capped for pupation. A larvae destined to be a worker bee is switched to worker jelly after the 3 days. Worker jelly is mainly honey/nectar and fermented pollen (bee bread). Larvae destined to be a drone is also fed worker jelly.


🍽 They are what they eat?

Nutrition plays a big part in the honeybee development. Royal jelly is an extremely rich and nutritious food source. The queen bee is the largest bee, but has the shortest gestation. All because of royal jelly. A worker bee that is switched to worker jelly is actually a smaller, sterile replica of a queen, that has been stunted with a less rich diet.


Pigeon Mountain


🤡 End with a Riddle

A drone has no father, only a grandfather....

📖 Interested in Beekeeping?

Follow me (@bushkill) so you don't miss the next post in the Beekeeping for Everyone! series
Check out the previous posts in the Beekeeping for Everyone! series!
#1 - Introduction
#2 - The Importance of Pollinators



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