The secrets of the honeybee nest

Honeybee life cycle

The honeybee, like all insects, will go through a number of development stages before becoming an adult. Whether it becomes a queen, a worker or a drone, all honeybees must make the transition through the four stages of metamorphosis; egg, larva, pupa and adult. The queen lays her eggs in the cells of the honeycomb. Fertilised eggs become workers (or a new queen) while unfertilised eggs become drones. The worker bees work hard feeding the rapidly growing larvae. Finally, the honeycomb cells are capped over so the larvae can spin their cocoons and pupate in private.

Life cycle development stages

When the magical transformation from pupa to adult is complete, the young bee emerges from the cell to take its place in honeybee society. The process from egg to adult can take as little as 16 days for a queen or as long as 24 days for a drone. Once a worker emerges her life span can vary from just a few weeks to almost a year depending on the season, the food available and the work she has to do. The new worker bee is soft, fluffy and rather undeveloped. Over the next weeks various specialised glands will mature determining the work she does in the colony. The work includes cleaning, feeding the young brood, packing nectar and pollen in the cells, building wax honeycomb, guarding the colony finally graduating to nectar, pollen, propolis and water collection.

Honeycomb

Honeybees are the only insects to make wax. This is formed into the familiar hexagonal honeycomb that is central to the honeybee colony. This efficient natural architecture provides an individual cell where the queen will lay an egg so each larva has its own development space. The area where the new bees are growing is known to beekeepers as the brood nest. The brood nest typically has a spherical shape. When a beekeeper removes individual frames from the beehive it is like drawing out a cross section of a globe. In the centre is the bees’ brood in various stages of development while surrounding the brood is a ring of stored pollen, rich in protein and an important component of the larvae’s food. Around all of this is honey that the bees have produced from the nectar of flowers. As summer progresses and nectar becomes more plentiful, extra storage space is needed so beekeepers provide extra boxes (or honey supers) for the bees to store their honey. It is this delicious surplus that beekeepers remove as a honey crop.

P.A.M April 2007