Honeybee comb

A comb a collection of hexagonal cells made up of bees wax. These cells are horizontally parallel to the ground, their closed ends are back to back and open ends are towards the opposite direction, forming the two surfaces of the comb. Functionally, there are three types of cells.

1. The attachment cells with which the comb is attached to the top of a wooden frame.

2. The storage cells for storing honey and pollen.

3. Brood cells, for rearing the young ones. The brood cells are subdivided into:

a) The worker cells: The cells in which worker bees are reared. There are 17.6 such cells in 4 linear inches

b) The drone cells: The cells in which drone bees are reared. There are 22 such cells in 4 linear inches in the Apis cerana and comb and 19.3 cells in Apis mellifera comb.

c) The queen cells: The cells in which queens are reared. These are much bigger and look like ground nut shells


A comb has three more or less distinct horizontal zones:

• The honey zone forms the top most portion.
• The pollen zone comes below the honey zone. These cells store the pollen.
• The brood zone is the lowermost portion. In this zone eggs and brood are reared.

 

Honey Bee Castes :

Every honey bee colony comprises of a single queen, a few hundred drones and several thousand worker castes of honey bees. Queen is a fertile, functional female, worker is a sterile female and the drone is a male insect. During active season the colony has few thousands of workers, a queen and few hundreds o drones.

Worker Bees

Worker bee is a underdeveloped female. There may be 20,000 to 80,000 in a hive. They do all the work of building the combs, collecting and storing nectar and pollen, feeding the larvae and cleaning the hive. These bees perform all the duties in the hive and field except reproduction. They have division of labour and their life is spent working, engaged in cleaning of cells guarding the entrance, building combs and feeding the brood. After 20 days they venture out to field and gather nectar and pollen. A bee's life span is about 6 weeks during active brood rearing season but lives longer when foraging and brood rearing activity is low. The workers build three types of wax cell, differing in size or shape. The queen lays eggs in each of the cells and the eggs hatch into larvae. The workers feed the larvae until they are ready to pupate and then they put a wax capping over the cell. After 10-11 days the capping is bitten off and the adult bee emerges. The eggs laid in the drone cells are unfertilized and develop into males. The eggs laid in the worker cells and queen cells are fertilized but the queen larvae are fed a different diet from that of the larvae in the worker cells. The difference in diet causes the workers to be sterile and the queen to be fertile.


In nutshell the duties of worker bees are : .

Duties of a worker

1. Their adult life span of around 6 weeks can be divided into:

a) First three weeks- house hold duty.

b) Rest of the life- out door duty.

House hold duty includes:

a. Build comb with wax secretion from wax glands.

b. Feed the young larvae with royal jelly secreted from hypopharyngeal gland.

c. Feed older larvae with bee-bread (pollen+ honey)

d. Feeding and attending queen.

e. Feeding drones.

f. Cleaning, ventilating and cooling the hive.

g. Guarding the hive.

h. Evaporating nectar and storing honey

Outdoor duties

1. Collecting nectar, pollen, propolis and water.

2. Ripening honey in honey stomach.

Duties of the house bee

The duties of a house bee are -

• Cleaning the hive and the comb.
• Feeding the brood.
• Caring for the queen.
• Making orientation flights.
• Comb building.
• Ventilating the hive.
• Packing pollen, water, nectar or honey into the combs.
• Executions.
• Guard duty

The Queen

Her only job is to lay eggs. Egg laying capacity is low in Apis cerana as compared to A. mellifera. queen is fed on glandular food by the worker bees and number of eggs laid per day depends upon the quality and quantity o this food. There may be no egg laying during winter in hills and very little in summer in plains. Young queen takes mating flights and mates with upto one dozen drones. The spermatozoa are stored in her spermatheca for her life time. Queen may have to be replaced every year in very good beekeeping areas but normally It is good for two years.

Duties of a Queen

In nutshell the duties of a queen bee are:

• The only individual which lays eggs in a colony .(Mother of all bees).
• Lays upto 2000/day in Apis mellifera.
• Five to Ten days after emergence, she mates with drones in one or more nuptial flights
• When her spermatheea is filled with sperms, she will start laying eggs and will not mate any more.
• She lives for 3 years
• The secretion from mandibular gland of the queen is called queen's substance.
• The queen substance if present in sufficient quantity performs following functions:
  
  a) Prevent swarming and absconding of colonies.
  b) Prevent development of ovary in workers.
  c) Colony cohesion is maintained.
  
  
• The queen can lay either fertilized or sterile eggs depending on the requirement.

The Drone :

Drones do not perform any hive duty. Their sole function is to mate with queen and are driven out of the colony when no more needed in the colony. The life of a drone is approximately 6-8 weeks.