Let's talk honey
Is there anything more fascinating in the insect universe than a honeybee hive?. It's a manufacturing center, a nursery and a queen's palace.
Every hive is a a community made up of thousands of individual bees. Like people, different bees have different kinds of work which is why honeybees are called social insects. The most important member of this bee community is the Queen bee. In size she is bigger and longer than the others. She also lives longer than the rest in the hive. Her task is to lay eggs and perform her task amazingly well. During a Queen's life she lives about 5 years, she may lay as many as a million eggs.
Wherever the Queen goes she is followed by a special group of bees who feed and care for her. These bees who do this job are called worker bees. Then there are the drones, they are idle clumsy fellows who don't do anything at all except mate the queen.
Worker bees are the most numerous group of bees in any hive and it is them that go most of the work. They feed the hive , nurse and care for the eggs and young. They gather pollen and nectar which they change into honey. A great deal of honey is made in the hive. Bees make much more honey than they need, the honey we eat is what is left over after the bees have finished feeding themselves.
Did you know
Drones die soon after mating, and since the Queen needs only one Drone to mate, the rest are kicked out of the hive and die of starvation due to weather and absence of survival instinct.
Disclaimer
The lovely photos are from Pinterest