The lifespan of a bee depends on two main factors: its type, whether it is a queen, male, or worker, and the time of its emergence.
How long do bees live
In this article we will explain to you in details how long do bees live : the queen, female workers, male and more...
The life cycle of bees
The honey bee community consists of three types of individuals, they are: the queen, the female worker, and the male, as the queen lays two types of eggs, namely: the fertilized eggs that produce the females that may be either queen or workers, and the unfertilized eggs that the males produce and hatch The eggs of both types after three days have passed, and the larvae that turn into pupae when fully developed, emerge from it, and then the adult bee appears, and the length of the period between laying eggs and the appearance of the bee depends on its type, as the queen appears after 16 days, while workers usually appear After 21 days have passed, the male needs 24 days to appear.
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How long do bees live : the Queen's age range
The queen bee is known when it first appears as the virgin queen, and its first mission is to get rid of other queens, by killing the larvae that are raised to become queen, and then the queen is freed for its second mission, which is mating with males during what is known as the mating flight that usually occurs after six Days after their appearance, and after the end of mating, the queen returns to the cell , and never leaves it unless there is a need for swarming, then after three days of mating, the queen begins laying eggs, as she can lay 1,000 eggs a day for the rest of her life, which extends on average from two to five years.
How long do bees live : The age range of female workers
Female workers are the smallest and most numerous members of the beehive, and they perform many tasks, including collecting nectar and pollen, converting nectar into honey , producing wax, feeding the queen and young larvae, and protecting the hive from intruders. The life span of workers depends on the season they appear. In it, the workers who appear in the spring and the beginning of the summer live between five and six weeks, while the workers who appear in the late autumn live for a period that extends between 4-6 months, as keeping the queen alive during the winter requires the presence of workers around to warm her. And the worker is able to live longer due to the changes in her structure during the winter, as her pharyngeal glands become more developed, and the amount of fat in her body increases.
Male age range : How long do bees live
The male bee differs from the worker in terms of size and function, as it is larger in size and is not responsible for gathering food, producing wax, or feeding the larvae, as it does not have a stinging needle, or a long tongue to help it collect nectar, so the only function of males is mating With the queen, as the males leave the hive approximately six days after their appearance, and congregate in specific places called drone-congregating areas, and the males that succeed in mating with the queen will die soon after, while the males who return They did not succeed in mating to the hive, and the male bee usually lives 8 weeks, but he may be expelled from the kingdom when there are few food sources in it.
Factors affecting the age of the bee
The life span of a bee is affected by many factors, as the bee usually dies of natural causes after living the specified time period, but it may also die as a result of being predated by animals, or perhaps as a result of being killed by other bees, and workers can die due to exhaustion The result of the hard work that you do, and here are some of the most important factors that pose a threat to the lives of bees :
Pesticide.
Habitat loss.
Infection with diseases and infections, including :
Infection with a parasitic fly (scientific name : Apocephalus borealis) that expels bees from the hive and causes their death, in addition to transmitting the deformed-wing virus to them. The destructive Varroa infestation (scientific name : Varroa destructor), which is an external parasite that has abdominal bristles and claws that help it catch the bee and attach itself to it to feed on its blood lymph.
The social life of bee species
The number of bee species around the world is more than 20 thousand species, as most of them live alone, while bees that lead a social life make up less than 8% of them, and the types of bees that live in hives do not exceed 3%, and this large number is classified From the types of bees to nine families, perhaps the most famous of which is the Apidae family, which includes three groups of social bees: the non-stinging bee group, the honey bee group, and the buzzing bee group.
Kingdom of honey bees
The honey bee group includes several types of bees, the most famous of which is the European honey bee (scientific name: Apis mellifera), in addition to eight other species that inhabit Asia, Europe, and Africa. The kingdom of honey bees includes three types of individuals, they are The queen, the female workers, and the males.
Queen bee
The honey bee hive includes, in natural conditions, one queen that results from a fertilized egg, similar to that of female workers, but it differs from it in the quality of food that it gets in the larva stage, as it feeds on an abundant amount of royal jelly, while the larvae that will develop into workers are fed It contains less royal jelly, along with a mixture of honey and pollen, and the queen is the only sexually complete female in the hive, who can mate with males to produce two types of eggs, which are the fertilized eggs that produce females, and the unfertilized eggs that result from Males, meaning that the main function of the queen is to reproduce and lay eggs, she lays up to 1,500 eggs per day during the peak of her production, and the second function of her is the secretion of pheromones, which are chemicals that help in the management and organization of the cell, and prevent the development of workers' ovaries, as well as prevent them from Raising new queens.
Female workers
Female workers are distinguished by being the smallest and most numerous members of the honey bee hive, and the worker bee is a female who cannot mate, reproduce , and lay eggs in natural conditions, but in exceptional circumstances - that is, when the kingdom of bees lacks a queen - they may lay unfertilized eggs, which hatch to produce Males, and female workers perform all the tasks that cell survival depends on, such as: Suck nectar from flowers using their long tongue, collect pollen using the feathery hair covering their body, then transfer them to the hive by placing them in pollen baskets on their hind legs . Converting nectar to honey. Secretion of wax from special glands located in the lower abdomen, and using it to build honeycombs. Taking care of the queen and the larvae, and producing the royal jelly needed to feed the queen and the young larvae. Cover the cells where the mature larvae are present to enable them to become pupae. Guarding the hive and attacking intruders, using its powerful jaws and stinging needle. Cell ventilation. Get rid of dead bees.
Males
Male honeybees can be distinguished from worker bees by being larger and fuller than them, and their antennae are slightly longer than the horns of the worker and the queen, as for the parts of their mouths they are shortened and do not enable it to collect nectar and pollen , and therefore it depends on the honey stock in the hive as a source of food, or Female workers may wait to feed him, and male honey bees have large compound eyes located on the top of his head, in order to be able to monitor the queen while flying to mate with her, which is the only function he performs, as he spends his time between eating, resting, and flying to the special sites where males congregate Waiting for the opportunity to mate with the queens.
Bumble bees
Bumblebees live within a kingdom similar to the kingdom of honey bees, as it consists of one queen, many workers and males, but the life cycle of the bumblebee kingdom is annual - not perennial - and begins with the appearance of the fertilized queen in the spring, as Then the queen builds the nest, provides it with pollen and nectar, and produces wax from the glands for that, then puts the first batch of eggs, which are fertilized eggs, and during that she protects and defends the nest, and takes care of the eggs that will hatch into larvae, which in turn turn into virgins. Then workers, who later assume their usual tasks, such as gathering food, defending the nest, and caring for the brood. The buzzing queen bee begins at the end of summer and early fall with the laying of unfertilized eggs, which produce the males, and at this stage the workers begin to raise queens from the fertilized eggs, and when the new queens emerge they leave the nest with the males to mate, and here the production of workers stops, and the founding queen and workers die, Only the newly mated queens remain, and with the approaching winter season, each queen stores an additional amount of fat in her body, and takes a suitable place for her to spend the winter in it, which is often in the soil, in order to protect her cells and organs from freezing, and here are some characteristics that distinguish Bumblebees on top of others : It adapts to live in cold climates, thanks to the long and thick hair that covers its body. It builds its nests in recesses of rocks, and between deciduous woods. The bumblebee kingdom is characterized by a relatively rudimentary social structure, as it does not have a communication system to guide the rest of the hive members to locations where food is available. Therefore, novice workers are forced to learn to collect food by trial and error, in stark contrast to honey bees who have a sophisticated communication system that includes dance that includes Through it, the bee scout can guide the rest of the workers in the direction and distance they must travel to reach the source of the nectar.
Non-stinging bees
Stingless bees are known by this name because their stingers are smaller, and it is rare to use them to defend themselves, and the non-stinging bees include about 300 different species, most of them live in tropical and subtropical regions, and build their nests in tree hollows. And inside rock crevices, and below are some of the most important characteristics of non-stinging bees : It is characterized by its small size, with most of its members less than 1 cm long, with few species similar to European honey bees in terms of size. They form perennial queens consisting of one queen, many workers and males, and both the queen and workers produce from fertilized eggs, while males produce from unfertilized eggs that are usually laid by workers. Individuals that are not stinging bees are able to communicate with each other through odors, and emit low-frequency vibrating sounds to guide the rest of the hive as to where the nectar is.
How long do bees live : average
The kingdom of bees consists of three main individuals; They are the queen, male bees and workers, and each one of them has a certain period of life that depends on his role in the kingdom of bees, workers live for a period of approximately six weeks, while the males die immediately after mating with the queen bee. The queen lives for a longer period of time compared to other members of bees or even other insects; The average lifespan of the queen bee ranges from two to three years, and this period of time may reach five years, and the life of the queen bee ends when it ages and decreases its egg productivity. Then the workers begin to feed the young bees and equip them to replace the queen, and when they are ready, the workers kill Queen to ensure continuity of the bee colony.
How Many Bees Live
How long does a bee live in summer and winter ? This question is usually concerned with young beekeepers and simply curious people. And since you can see different numbers in different sources, the question attracts more attention. The article will describe how long a bee can live, depending on its range of activity and other factors.
What determines the life of bees ?
The life of a bee depends on many things.
The time of the year directly affects the longevity of the bees, so in winter the bees live longer than in the summer.
Field of activity - Drones, worker bees and queen have different life spans.
Bee colony strength - vulnerable families do not live long.
Quality of life - the easier the life of bees, the longer they live.
Living conditions - if disease begins in the hive, the life of bees may be greatly reduced.
The amount of sugar that the body processes.
Bee (honey) lives about 30-40 days in summer
How long honey bees and other bees live ?
Given their large role in the life of bees, the scope of their activity and the purpose they play, it is imperative that we analyze in detail the number of drones, queen and working insects.
The worker bee (honey) lives about 30-40 days in summer. This is the average number. At the same time, the life of a worker bee can be greatly increased or decreased depending on the job. The more honey bees work, the less they will survive. This is one of the reasons why bee life increases in winter - there is no work. No need to collect nectar, just monitor the offspring and clean the hives.
The drone according to various sources can live from 15 days to 6 months. The drone is believed to die after fertilization of the uterus. For fertilization, it is ready for about two weeks of life. So the life of the drone can be very short or long. It all depends on the presence of a uterus in the cell and the number of drones in the cell. It should also be noted that many drones die during the "battle" for the womb.
The drone according to various sources can live from 15 days to 6 months
The uterus lives in the longest species of bees - 3-4 years in the apiary, and if the bees and beekeepers take good care of it, then its life may increase to 5 years or more. This long life span can be explained very easily - the uterus only needs childbearing. No matter how exhausted she is, she still does not work in the field or by cell. Worker bees care for them, feed and feed them. She only eats royal jelly - the most valuable and nutritious substance produced by worker bees.
If we consider in more detail the life span of bees, then we can note that life depends largely on the time of their breeding.
Worker bees may live up to 35 days on average.
Born in June individuals - up to 30 days.
Those removed, in the period of the main honey group live up to 30 days.
September or October bees can live for 6-7 months.
Late fall bees can live up to 8-9 months. Winter tolerant, and retains the ability to raise young animals.
In families where there is no brood of bees, the life span of a worker bee is 1 year.
The uterus lives the longest species of bees - 3-4 years in the apiary
It is believed that the minimum age of a working bee can not exceed one year even in very good condition.
How long do wild bees live ?
How long do wild bees live? Wild bees have a slightly different lifespan. They are more stubborn, because they work less, and multiply less. So the wild bee uterus can easily live 5 years, sometimes up to 6-8 years old.
The same applies to worker bees. Their lives are also increased by about 20-30% of the number of days of bees in the apiary. But drones live in the wild almost as well as in apiaries, because after fertilization they die, and if there are many of them, then worker bees simply expel them to starvation.
Wild bees live longer than apiaries
Although there are many insects in this world, there is no one that provided services that are useful to humanity as much as the honey bee. For centuries, bee farmers raised these insects to obtain honey and relied on their activity and frequent trips to the fields to pollinate the crops, as it is estimated that one third of the agricultural crops we consume were pollinated by bees.
1. Honey bees can fly at speeds of up to 24 kilometers per hour:
At first glance, you might think that this number is large, but for the insect world, 24 kilometers per hour is considered a low speed. The bodies of bees are not designed for long distances, and in order for the bee to stay in the air during its short trips it must flap its small wings at a speed ranging from 12,000 and 15,000 times per minute.
2. The number of individuals in a single hive can reach 60,000 bees:
The work that bees do is not easy at all, and therefore it requires the presence of a large number of individuals / and this large number ranges between 20 thousand and 60 thousand bees per cell. Each cell contains one queen and thousands of worker bees, but not all of these workers do the same work, as some of them take care of the young, and another part works to serve the queen, clean her and provide food for her.
At the door of the hive there are a number of guards who are careful not to enter intruders into the hive, as for the construction workers who build the foundations of the hive made of wax, which the queen uses to lay eggs and the workers use it to store honey. There are also workers who remove dead bees from the hive and workers make frequent trips in order to collect enough pollens and flower nectar to feed all the members of the hive.
3. It takes 12 worker bees to produce one tablespoon of honey:
It may seem illogical to you, and perhaps you will start thinking that the production of honey in this case is impossible, but do not forget that there are a large number of individuals in each hive, roughly and for enough food for the hive in the winter, the bees must produce 24 kilograms of Honey During the spring and autumn seasons, this huge amount of honey is the result of the collective work of tens of thousands of bees.
4. The Queen stores a supply of sperm for her life:
The queen bee lives for a period ranging from 3 to 5 years, but her life is going faster than you might imagine, for a week after leaving her royal house, the virgin queen flies out of the hive to mate, and the mating process must take place within the next twenty days, if she is unable to do the thing. During this period, it will never occur and she will lose her ability to mate, but if she succeeds in her task, she will not need to do mating again in her life, for she will store sperm in her spermatozoon, and use it to fertilize her eggs that she produces during her life.
5. The queen bee filters competitions:
When the Virgin Queen leaves her royal home, she will generally start looking for any competing queen and try to kill her, and it does not take long for the Virgin Queen to find her competitors to start stinging them to death. The Virgin Queen also searches for the unopened royal houses and stings them to kill the larvae inside, and it is often possible to distinguish between the houses that the queens came out from and the houses that contain a slain queen from the place of the hole: the royal house that contains a hole on its side has been attacked by one of the queens.
6. The queen bee can produce more than 2000 eggs per day:
Only two days after her mating, the queen begins her new job, which will continue until her death, which is producing eggs. We can say that the queen bee is very skilled in this job, as the layer of eggs that she produces per day can be of a weight equivalent to her own weight.
On average, the queen produces about 1500 eggs, and the production of eggs consumes the entire time of the queen, which means that she does not have time to do any other work such as eating food, so the workers clean the queen and provide food for her. During its entire life, a fertilized queen bee will produce approximately one million eggs.
7. Bees use complex sign language to communicate:
Bees have the most complex sign language used to communicate between individuals within the animal kingdom outside of the primates class. This insect has one million neurons clustered in its small brain, which is about one cubic millimeter in size, and it uses each of these neurons.
The worker bee must play different roles during its life, and these actions require great mental capabilities, for example the bees that collect food must search for flowers, evaluate the amount of food that they find, and determine the way back to the hive, and then share the information they have obtained With the rest of the bees collecting food.
8. Male bees die as soon as they impregnate the queen:
Each type of bee has one goal that it seeks to achieve, and for the male bee, this goal is to secure the sperms needed to pollinate the virgin queen. A week after they leave their homes, the male bees are able to achieve this goal, and after they pollinate the queen, they die immediately.
9. The temperature of the beehive is 34 degrees Celsius throughout the year:
It seems that bees have an excellent idea of air conditioning and heating, as they maintain a constant temperature in the hive throughout the year. In the winter, when the temperatures are low, the bees gather near each other within the hive to maintain warmth, and the workers also gather around the queen, forming a layer that isolates her from the cold.
During the summer, the bees move the air within the hive by using their wings to protect the queen and the eggs from high temperatures, and if you approach the hive during the summer, you can clearly hear the buzzing caused by these small bees ventilating the hive.
10. Beeswax is produced from special glands on the abdomen of bees:
The task of producing wax is reserved for the young workers from the bees that build the hive. The wax is produced from eight glands located on the lower part of the bee’s abdomen and is in the form of liquid droplets that harden upon exposure to air and become flakes. The workers must then soften the wax with their mouths to make it suitable for use in building the hive.
11. A worker bee can land 2000 flowers per day:
Of course, the pollen on these flowers is too heavy for the bee to carry them all at once, so the bee collects from 50 to 100 pollen flowers before it heads back to its hive. Throughout the day, the bee repeats the round-trip journey in order to collect pollen, and this would stress its small body, so the pollen collector lives for a period not exceeding three weeks, during which it travels approximately 800 kilometers.
12. The hive can decide the type of bees that will hatch from the eggs:
Yes, it is true that it controls the type of bee that will be born through the type of food you provide to the larva, for example the larvae that are destined to become queens are fed with royal jelly or what is also called royal jelly, and the larvae that will become workers are fed with honey and bee bread Which consists of pollen grains.
13. Bees can produce a reserve queen:
If something happens that causes the hive to lose the queen, the hive can produce a reserve queen on the condition that the queen lays eggs in the last five days before her death, by changing the type of food that is served to some larvae, so the workers get rid of the bee bread and honey given to the larvae and feed them royal jelly.
The bee bread previously eaten by the larvae reduces the size of the bees' ovaries, so the reserve queen will not be as successful as the original queen who only consumed royal jelly, but there is no other option in this case and the reserve queen will provide the eggs to the hive for a period of time.
14. The world of bees is a purely female world:
The male bees that are present in the cells come from the unfertilized eggs and it is only about 15% of the colony, although the male bees have no role in the hive except to provide sperm to the virgin queen for mating, but their presence in the hive is a good thing, it is It means the cell has enough food.
Even with food being available, male bees are expelled away because they consume the resources of the hive, all they do is eat food and mate, unlike female workers who do other work within the hive, and it must also be said that male bees do not have a needle in their backside like that of females.
15. The Queen seeks to secure genetic diversity in the cell:
During her journey to mate, the queen mates with a number of males ranging from 12 to 15 in order to secure the genetic diversity that ensures the cell will be healthy in the future.
16. Bees are considered one of the creatures obsessed with cleanliness:
The bees work hard to keep the hive clean continuously, and the only bee that violates this rule and eliminates its need within the hive is the queen bee, and when this happens, her bridesmaids from the workers clean.
Even when it comes to death, bees do not die inside the hive most of the time, as bees go outside so that their carcasses remain there, away from food and small larvae.
About bees
Bees are classified according to the different types of 20000 as a type of insects that belong in its classification to the suborder with waist *, which belongs to the order Hymenoptera, and these types differ in nature according to their different shapes, colors, and sizes, and it is mentioned that the size of adult bees ranges between 2 mm. Approximately 4 cm, and that it is closely related to the wasp , It is also noticeable that there is a difference in the life patterns of each species, the places they take as homes, in addition to the seasons of their activity, and the type of flowers that they visit. Some types of bees pollinate flowers according to their opening and production of nectar, There are species that practice their pollination activity throughout the day, other species at dawn, and third nocturnal ones that work in moonlight, Despite the many types of bees and their seasons of activity, they provide the world with an invaluable environmental service, which lies in the fact that they are responsible for pollinating 80% of flowering plants in addition to pollinating 75% of fruit trees, vegetables and nuts.
Bee colony
All members of a single bee colony work in a team spirit together despite the diversity of tasks and names in it, where there are queens, workers, and males, which differ in their composition and tasks, but they all start as one longitudinal egg placed inside one of the colony's holes for three days, then hatch The larva enters the stage of seeking close care, day and night, and is fed with royal jelly that the workers make in the colony for several days, then it is fed with what is called bee bread, which is a mixture of honey and pollen, and then the doors of the holes are closed on the larva for a period of one to two weeks so that it can Transforming into a cocoon, and then entering the stage of the adult insect that has a complete body, head and wings.
Bumblebees
Bumblebees are distinguished by their relatively large size, and their furry cover compared to other types of bees, as they are known for their mostly black and yellow colors, and some of them may have two additional colors, white and orange, and it is worth noting that there are about 25 species of it in the eastern United States.
Carpenter bees
The carpenter bees (Carpenter bees) take wood as a home, and they resemble buzzing bees, but they are considered solitary bees, and it is worth noting that they can be distinguished by their large size and the luster of their black belly, and this type of bees is spread throughout the eastern United States of America, while it is reported that It enters a dormant period throughout the winter followed by a mating season in the spring.
We dissolve sweat
How long do bees live sweat bees are called by this name because of their attraction to human sweat, and they take on the ground mostly homes, but some of them may live in wood, and some types of these bees are social in nature, but they take over the affairs of their kingdom for one queen, while Some of the others are solitary, living outside the colony of bees, and it is indicated that there are parasitic types of them that depend for their resources on other types of bees, and sweat bees are distinguished by their dark color, or completely green, or only a green part.
Summary
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