BEES

Bees are among the most useful of all insects. Honey bees produce the honey that we eat and beeswax which is used for making polishes and candles. Far more important is part played by bees in pollinating our crops. Plants cannot form seeds unless they are pollinated.

Bees vary in size from a small stingless species about one-twelfth of an inch long. Most bees live solitary lives-they live alone and each female makes her own small nest. Others, such as the bumble bees and honey bees, are social insects. They live and work in large family groups.

Farmers care for honey bees by provided hives to house their colonies. There are three kinds of bees in a colony: queens, workers and drones. The queen bee heads the colony. She starts life like any other bee-as an egg laid in a cell in the honey- comb. But queens get special food when they hatch as larvae. After a few days, the larva is sealed in its cell; it changes into a pupa and develops into an adult. About two to three weeks after the egg is laid, the young queen bites her way out of the cell. She kills any rival queen and mates with one of the drones on a marriage flight. She usually returns to the hive and ousts the old queen, who leaves in a swarm, accompanied by her workers, to start a new colony.

The queen bee’s only function is to lay eggs in the call of the honey comb. Worker bees hatch from most of the eggs. These are female bees that are smaller than the queen and never mate. They have the task of looking after the whole colony. They build the honeycomb with its six sided cells, out of a wax produced from their bodies. The workers collect nectar and pollen's for flowers. They fly about collecting food here and there, and then fly straight to the hive in a bee line. These bees show others where food can be found by dancing a special dance that indicates the direction of the food in relation to the sun. The workers then convert the nectar into honey and place it in the cells. The workers also defend the colony. But they sting human beings only if they are frightened or hurt.

Male bees, called drones, appear mainly in the late summer; they do not work and have no sting their only job is to mate with the young queens on the marriage flight. Drones do not live very long.