[DW58]

Heavily cropped.

Attached Images

View Picture EXIF

File Date

 

[SJM]

Heavily cropped.

That is great DW

[aslyfox]

Well, it's a little more complicated, Tony. There is only one fully reproductive female in the hive, and she is the queen. She has mated with one (or more, in some species) male prior to founding the colony, and this leaves her with enough supplies for a life time of offspring. Every fertilized egg she lays becomes, in fact, a female - but these develop into nonreproductive workers, unless they are fed a specialised diet as larvae. To get sons, she will lay unfertilised eggs, and these, the only males, leave the colony in search for young unmated queens, and die shortly after mating. Nature is wondrous indeed!

more info on the queen bee

Queen Bees Crash Diet

A queen bee is entirely at the mercy of her attendants for food and at certain times of year, workers will actually put their queen on a diet! In the spring, large colonies divide in two as a means of propagating the species. This process is called swarming. Roughly half the colony, as well as the queen, leaves the hive and sets out to start a new colony. The remaining bees make a new queen and continue on. Swarming is risky business and takes weeks of planning. One of the challenges is that the queen, who almost never leaves the hive, must fly a great distance to make the new home (typically over 800ft from the original nesting site). Queen bees are poor fliers because of their size and weight so to remedy this worker bees will restrict their queen’s food intake prior to swarming. The queen must loose 1/3 of her normal body weight in order to fly!

Beekeeping Like A Girl 6 THINGS YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT QUEEN BEES

[MetteHHH]

Heavily cropped.

Cute! Are they sleeping in there? Some of our little Andrena bees sleep in flowers like that.

Here's another bumble bee

[Evie]

Well, it's a little more complicated, Tony. There is only one fully reproductive female in the hive, and she is the queen. She has mated with one (or more, in some species) male prior to founding the colony, and this leaves her with enough supplies for a life time of offspring. Every fertilized egg she lays becomes, in fact, a female - but these develop into nonreproductive workers, unless they are fed a specialised diet as larvae. To get sons, she will lay unfertilised eggs, and these, the only males, leave the colony in search for young unmated queens, and die shortly after mating. Nature is wondrous indeed!

If I remember correctly, the queen bee cannot lay unfertilized eggs after she is mated. Basically, only a new queen bee lays unfertilized eggs, gets males from them, mates with them, and then lays only fertilized eggs from then on. When nest becomes too big, worker bees feeds one larvae different diet, get a new unmated queen and part of the nest flies out with it and some food reserves.

[MetteHHH]

If I remember correctly, the queen bee cannot lay unfertilized eggs after she is mated. Basically, only a new queen bee lays unfertilized eggs, gets males from them, mates with them, and then lays only fertilized eggs from then on. When nest becomes too big, worker bees feeds one larvae different diet, get a new unmated queen and part of the nest flies out with it and some food reserves.

Not quite... it's really a HUGE topic, and I could potentially go on until I bore you all to death - so I will try to restrain myself!

So, the order of insects called Hymenoptera all have this type of sex determination - males from unfertilized eggs, females from fertilized eggs. This group of insects comprises ants, wasps and bees, and in total more than 150,000 different species! In comparison, we have about 6000 different mammals and 10,000 different birds. Among the bees, our stories tend to focus on honey bees, since they are the domesticated species and they produce honey for us. Still, even among bees there are almost 20,000 different wild species - and one tame!

The story you tell about colony splitting is absolutely true for honey bees, and a few other bees do the same. Except even with honey bees, the queen is able to control whether an egg is fertilized or not: She will lay fertilized eggs most of the time, since these become workers and workers are essential to the success of the colony, but around the time the colony begins to produce queens, she will lay unfertilized eggs too to produce males - called drone bees. New queens go on nuptial flights with the males, and after this the males die.

Just one more twist to the story: Worker bees can actually "cheat" and lay an unfertilized egg of their own, when they encounter an unoccupied nest cell in the colony. This is in their own genetic interest, since they are more closely related to their own sons than to their siblings. However, workers "police" each other in the nest, and if one worker observes another worker laying an egg, she will immediately eat it!

I will stop now - but if you like good bee stories, you should check out Dave Goulson's books, particularly "A Sting in the Tale". He is a great writer and the book is hilarious, but full of insect insights too!

[noelcmn]

[TER-OR]

Not quite... it's really a HUGE topic, and I could potentially go on until I bore you all to death - so I will try to restrain myself!



I will stop now - but if you like good bee stories, you should check out Dave Goulson's books, particularly "A Sting in the Tale". He is a great writer and the book is hilarious, but full of insect insights too!

Indeed, most people know bees from the honeybee which are behaviorally in many ways closer to their cousins the ants than most other bees. There's another great book to get, The Bees in Your Backyard.
The Bees in Your Backyard: A Guide to North America's Bees: Joseph S. Wilson, Olivia J. Messinger Carril: 9780691160771: amazon.com: Books?tag=pentaxforums-20&

Pollinator Press' new one is also very good.
https://www.amazon.com/Bees-Identification-Native-Plant-Forage/dp/0991356357...s=heather+holm

[aslyfox]

golden

can you spot any signs of the third one

SOOC

crop

crop and pp

K 3 II + HD PENTAX-D FA* 70-200mm F2.8 ED DC AW

[DW58]

Cute! Are they sleeping in there? Some of our little Andrena bees sleep in flowers like that.

Not sleeping. Both bumble and honey bees were flying in and out of this flower at a rapid pace. It's from a pumpkin plant we had decided not to plant because it was the "runt of the litter." The day it was headed for the compost pile we decided to plant it anyway. It just started blooming and being the only flower like this anymore could be the reason for its popularity with the pollinators.

[MetteHHH]

[noelcmn]

[TER-OR]

Not sleeping. Both bumble and honey bees were flying in and out of this flower at a rapid pace. It's from a pumpkin plant we had decided not to plant because it was the "runt of the litter." The day it was headed for the compost pile we decided to plant it anyway. It just started blooming and being the only flower like this anymore could be the reason for its popularity with the pollinators.

Male squash bees, notably Peponapis pruinosa, will sleep in the blooms. The females forage at dawn, so the males need to be ready.
I've never been able to get an image of females - males are easy.

[MetteHHH]

Here's a pretend-bumblebee in action

[DW58]

Male squash bees, notably Peponapis pruinosa, will sleep in the blooms. The females forage at dawn, so the males need to be ready.
I've never been able to get an image of females - males are easy.

I did not know that. This shot was taken 3 minutes before the two bumble bees. Was fun standing in the middle of so much bee activity. Reminded me a little bit of the years I was running 3 hives on the farm. Started with Carniolan because the book I had at the time said they may be less susceptible to foul brood. This was long enough ago where we didn't have internet service on the farm. The down side was that they tend to swarm more often. Turned out they tended to swarm just before the height of the blackberry vines blooming. So the third year I introduced Italian queens. Two years later I had massive die off in all three hives. Determined it was not caused by American or European Foulbrood and sold all my equipment and went on to other endeavors.