Bees

LOUPE-ABEILLE

Types of bees in the hive

The queen

  • The queen is the mother of all the bees in the hive,
  • She has a lifespan 40 times longer than that of worker bees thanks to her exclusive
    diet of royal jelly
  • She has one responsibility, and one responsibility alone: the development and
    survival of the colony! At the height of the season, she can lay up to 2,000 eggs per
    day!

But how does a hive get a queen?

To create a queen, the bees:

  • choose a larva,
  • enlarge its cell to make a royal cell,
  • feed that larva exclusively on royal jelly

And then the magic happens!

With this simple change in diet, bees transform a small worker into a queen capable of laying eggs for her entire life.

The female workers

They do all of the work in the beehive.
They change jobs several times throughout their lives.
→ Discover the 7 jobs in a bee’s career!

Drones (males)

  • Their sole purpose is to fertilize a queen
  • They don’t sting
  • Unlike worker bees, they do not do any work within the colony. In autumn, when
    reserves become scarcer, they are expelled from the hive.

Creation and birth of a bee

You might be wondering “How are baby bees made?”

Inside the beehive, everything begins very slowly, out of sight…

The queen lays an egg in a small cell.
A few days later, nice and snug in the cell, it becomes a tiny larva.
The bees then take care of it, feeding it precious food: royal jelly.
(One will receive more of this than the others – she will become the future queen.)

Then the larva grows, transforms into a pupa…

And one fine day, surprise: A little bee chews its way out of its cell… and discovers the world!

Swarming

Sometimes, the hive is overflowing. As there are too many bees, they need more space, and so a very special moment arrives: swarming. A proportion of the bees take flight, usually with the queen, to embark on a new adventure and find a new home!

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