I love honeybees! I learned a lot about them, and wanted to share that knowledge with you! If any bee expert sees a mistake in my post – PLEASE DO CORRECT ME! I won’t take any offense!
One quick note I forgot to make a meme for: This ONLY applies to European honeybees. There are other species of bees that do things differently.
Worker bees run the whole show. They’re the ones that feed all of the bees, tend to the queen, tend to the larvae, AND defend the hive from predators. Needless to say, they’ve got a looot on their plate.
Here’s a close up, so you can better see each cell.
I found the royal jelly picture on Pinterest, so I couldn’t find the source. Source of the bee bread is in the top-right corner of the pic.
There’s something she has to do first, and it’s not pretty.
Nature is smart enough to not put the survival of the entire beehive on a single queen bee. There are multiple queens that are ready, but there can only be one true queen. Thus, they have to eliminate the competition.
I removed the sound because it was this annoying song that was distracting from the video clip. Here’s the source of the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npn-yhGJw_c&list=PLyqRbJF5PWalMdsZEa36OfsbLbB2JFuve&index=2
In this particular video, the beekeeper had to rescue this queen after the hive rejected her. He put some friendly worker bees in there to tend to her, and she began piping – which is why I included it. Piping: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-G9d6-DwFY&list=PLyqRbJF5PWalMdsZEa36OfsbLbB2JFuve&index=3
I was really surprised when I learned that. It’s nothing like wasp nests.
Just an extra fun fact: Male honey bees are unique, because they hatch from unfertilized eggs. That means that these eggs can be laid by both worker and queen bees!
Also, sorry about the “they leave will leave the hive.” It was a typo I didn’t catch.
*thousands of bees. Not hundreds. Bee gang-bangs are intense.
Unfortunately, while drones don’t fight to the death, they still die after mating. Inserting their sperm into the queen violently rips out their spleen (or another organ, I’m not 100% positive it’s the spleen).
Video source: https://youtu.be/0WB0i1cSBWI I left the music, because it was soft and beautiful, and not that loud kooky obnoxious stuff. It felt like a lovely addition to the little clip.
Interestingly enough, sometimes the old queen will stay with her initial hive. When that happens, she and the winning virgin bee will get along just fine. Once the old queen bee dies from old age, the virgin queen will leave the hive to mate. Then she returns and begins laying eggs.
Call an exterminator so they can see if the bees are docile. If they are, then just call a local beekeeper to relocate them. No need to freak out. They’re just moving.
Found the picture on Pinterest. During spring and summer, drone bees will help keep the hive cool by fanning their wings. However, since they don’t have stingers like the worker bees – they really only provide sperm and a cooling system. When the queen is fully mated, and the weather gets cooler… they aren’t so useful anymore.
I personally would just serve them an eviction notice without resulting to horrific murder, but Mother Nature doesn’t work like that.
Here’s a clip of the drone getting flung out of the hive. Source: https://youtu.be/3gQTtudYUiQ
This is one of the things that I find most fascinating about honeybees.
Every queen bee needs the hive to survive, but the hive does not need that particular queen bee.
Queen bees are entirely reliant on the worker bees for survival. They feed, clean, and protect her. If there are no worker bees to tend to her, she will die.
For the worker bees, however, this queen is expendable. If something happens to the queen, they can put another larva in royal jelly to make a new one.
Thus, the queen is not the most important figure in the hive. Her subjects are.
I hope you enjoyed this post!
There’s a reason my text layout includes the little dots and extra paragraph breaks. If you’re interested in the reason behind this, I explained it here.