Monday, February 18, 2013

Life of a Bee

Bees have been around for millions of years and they have helped us in a way that we humans needed them badly. They provide us with food that we need and one of these is honey. Scientists have long discovered that modernization is killing these helpful insects and drastic measures are needed for them to survive. But, what if bees were gone?

A single worker bee has to visit 2,000 flowers each day to deliver back to the colony where a house keeper bee receives the honey and pollen to feed it to their larvae. They mostly live for 6 or 7 weeks which is automatically replaced just after its death. The queen bee lays an egg a second when it reaches her fertile state.

Older worker bees are the ones which do the foraging and travel using the sun to guide them where they are going and how to return to the colony. They travel for about 3 miles to find flowers and when they get exhausted they land and rest for a while, they do this to prevent dying from exhaustion because of the heavy load they have which is either pollen or honey. Worker bees work every day light and they are born to work their entire life.

When one finds a good spot of flowers, it sends a message through a waggle dance. It provides the exact area and distance of the flowers. The nurse maid workers are the ones responsible in feeding and taking care of the larvaes. They receive the pollen and honey from worker bees and then feed it to the larvaes.

When the larvae grow it is first fed by a very special jelly which is the royal jelly. Each larvae is fed 2,000 times and kept at a temperature of 35°. The queen gets this magical jelly from bees that are 3 days old and is fed with it. It's the key for the survival of the entire colony, because it helps the queen to maintain its power and helps the entire colony to replenish by the thousand.

They are very vulnerable when they are out of the hive. They sometimes get plagued by a deadly louse called verroa destructor. The louse attaches to their body and feeds hemolymph and often cause death to the entire colony. There is also their nemesis which are the bee eater that are masters of aerobatics in the air.

The power of the queen will eventually vanish and worker bees are then ready to make new chambers of new sets of queen. After the queens have hatched, they fight to death and the only one left will then rule the kingdom. When a bee is born it treasures each time it lives by serving and doing their one true purpose: keeping the colony alive.

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