About Honey Bees - Types, Races, and Anatomy 

What is the queen bee?

She can be recognized by her abdomen, which is usually smooth and elongated, extending well beyond her folded wings.

What is the queen bee's role?

Her function in the hive is one of production. She is normally the only reproductive female in the colony. Egg-laying begins in early spring, initiated when the first fresh pollen is brought home by the workers. Egg production will continue until fall, or as long as pollen is available.

At the height of her productivity, the queen could lay as many as 2000 eggs each day. A queen bee can live for up to five years, but her period of usefulness rarely exceeds two or three years. Younger queens produce many more eggs, and older ones may produce excessive drones. Many beekeepers re-queen their colonies every year or two. Older queens are often superseded (replaced) by the workers without any assistance, or even knowledge, of the beekeeper. Good quality queens can be reared by an experienced beekeeper, but a beginner will usually do better to buy good queens from a reputable producer.

What is the queen substance?

Queen bees also produce a pheromone known as queen substance. This mixture of chemicals is passed individually from bee to bee throughout the entire hive as they share food. If a queen bee is removed from a colony, the workers will notice her absence within several hours because of the drop in the level of this pheromone. This queenless state quickly initiates the urge to rear a new "emergency" queen from the youngest available larvae (1-3 days old). The presence of this pheromone also inhibits the development of the workers' ovaries. After a period of queenlessness, some may become laying workers. Workers also evaluate their queen based on the quantity of the pheromones she produces. If workers begin to receive an insufficient dose each day, they may perceive her as poor quality, and begin making preparations to supersede her. Beekeepers often mark the queen's thorax with a dot of paint to make her easy to find, and to determine if she has been replaced. 

What are worker bees?

Workers are the smallest of the bee castes, but are by far the most numerous. All workers are female, and normally incapable of reproduction. They are unable to mate, but in a hopelessly queenless colony, workers may begin to lay unfertilized eggs, which develop into drones.

Workers do all of the necessary tasks within a colony including:

• They secrete the wax used in the hive, and form it into honeycombs.
• They forage for all of the nectar and pollen brought into the hive, and transform the nectar into honey.
• They produce royal jelly to feed to the queen and young larvae.
• They also tend to the needs of the larvae and queens.
• They cap the cells of mature larvae for pupation and remove debris and dead bees from the hive.
• Worker bees defend the hive against intruders and maintain optimal conditions by heating, cooling and ventilating the hive.

Workers have well-developed compound eyes on the sides of their heads, and three simple eyes (ocelli) at the vertex. Their tongue is well developed and elongated for taking up nectar from flowers.

Worker bee lifespan

Workers reared in the spring and early summer tend to live for five to six weeks. The first two weeks of their lives is spent as house bees, doing tasks in the hive. The remainder of their time is spent as field bees, foraging for food outside the hive. Workers that reach maturity in the late fall may live well into the following spring. They must maintain a cluster of bodies around the queen bee, keeping her warm through the winter months. Later, when egg-laying resumes, they must raise the first generation of young bees the next year. 

What are drones?

Drones are the male honey bees. The only function of a drone is to fertilize a young queen bee.

• They are visibly larger and stouter than workers.
• They possess large distinctive eyes that meet on the top of their heads, and have antennae slightly longer than the workers or queen.
• Their mouth parts are generally reduced.
• Drones develop from unfertilized eggs, and drone cells are visibly larger than those of workers.
• Drones do not tend the brood, produce wax, or collect pollen or nectar. They will feed themselves directly from honey cells in the hive, or beg food from worker bees.
• They are reared chiefly in the spring and summer, beginning about four weeks before new queens are produced, thus ensuring that ample drones will be available to mate with emerging queens.
• Their day is typically divided between periods of eating and resting, and patrolling mating sites known as drone congregation areas.
  
  Drone production will cease in the late summer, as the quantity of available food declines. Before winter, the drones are usually driven out of the hive by workers, who guard against their return. A colony that has lost its queen may develop laying workers, who can produce only drones. When this occurs, the colony is effectively doomed. The production of many drones, therefore, will be their final effort to pass on the colony's genetic line by mating with a virgin queen from another colony.

What are the Races of Honey Bees?

Around 20,000 species of bees have been described in the superfamily Apoidea. These all share a number of common traits that are unique to bees, and separate them from the rest of the Hymenoptera.

While ants and wasps are carnivorous in at least some stage of their life cycle, bees are completely herbivorous, deriving all of their nutrition from the pollen and nectar of flowers (an exception to this is when, under nutritional stress, worker bees may kill and consume bee larvae, thus conserving the protein). The anatomy of the bee is superbly adapted for the collection of their food from flowers.

Multiple species of bees are kept around the world.

In some tropical regions of Africa, Australia, and the Americas, native stingless bees are kept for honey production.  In Asia several species of Apis are utilized by people. But the western honey Bee, Apis mellifera, is the most common bee kept for honey and pollination around the world. Originating in Africa, the western honey bee spread across the entire continent and into Europe and the Middle East, occupying environmental niches. Over centuries in isolation, distinct races, or sub-species, of Apis mellifera adapted to specific regions and climates, and acquired recognizable differences in behavior, appearance, and disposition.

Numerous races of the honey bee are recognized, and have been kept by people in many cultures throughout history.

Each of the races of has genetic traits that are potentially desirable for beekeeping, such as honey production or disease resistance, and they may possess other traits that are less desirable, such as susceptibility to disease, or a highly defensive temperament. All of these races of honey bee are sub-types of a single species, and are capable of successfully interbreeding, resulting in hybrid bees types.

History of honey bee production

While honey hunting for wild bees' nests was probably common throughout the ancient world, the Egyptians were among the first to attempt keeping bees in artificial hives. Barges loaded with colonies of Apis mellifera lamarkii would travel up and down the Nile River, following the seasonal abundance of flora. As beekeeping methods spread, most ancient cultures are known to have kept the bees that were endemic to their regions. As Europeans explored and colonized other parts of the globe, they have transported and established the western honey bee on every continent except Antarctica.

When did honey bees arrive in the U.S.?

These bees adapted and thrived in many places while in others, they succumbed to parasites and diseases originally adapted to other bee host species. In the early 1600s, English colonists brought hives of Apis mellifera mellifera to the Jamestown settlement. These bees thrived in the old growth forests of the New World, and spread west in advance of the pioneers. These bees were said to be easily excitable, "runny" on the combs, and susceptible to some diseases, however they overwintered well in cold climates. In the mid-19th century, the Italian race of bees, Apis mellifera lingustica, was imported to the U.S. and became the most popular race of domestic honey bee due to a gentle disposition and high honey production.

 Africanized honey bees

Bees adapted to conditions in Europe faced fewer predators than those in Africa. The cold winters of northern Europe encouraged bees to gather excess honey for winter food, and forced the bees to develop their overwintering strategy of clustering for warmth. These traits helped the honey bees to thrive in North America, but when they were imported to South America, they did not fare as well in the tropical environment. In an attempt to breed a productive honey bee that was adapted to a tropical climate, Brazilian scientists in 1956 imported colonies of Apis mellifera scutellata from Tanzania. In 1957, some of the bees escaped and bred with populations of European honey bees in Brazil. These hybrids became known as Africanized honey bees (AHB) and thrived in the tropical environment. They quickly spread and have since moved through Central America and Mexico, effectively replacing most of the European bee stock in these regions. In 1990 the first AHBs were detected in Texas. In 2005 they had entered Arkansas. Re-queening colonies with bees of known gentle European stock will be essential in maintaining beekeeping in Arkansas with the arrival of the AHB.

Internal Anatomy of a Honey Bee

Like all insects, a honey bee's body is divided into 3 segments: the head, thorax, and abdomen (illustration by Jon Zawislak).

The pollen press is located just below the pollen basket on the hind legs. As pollen is combed from the rest of its body, the bee uses this leg joint to compress the grains into a dense mass, which can be more efficiently stored in the corbicula.

For further reading, The Anatomy Of The Honey Bee by R.E. Snodgrass is now available online in the Google Book archive.

For detailed video lessons on honey bee structure visit the Understanding Bee Anatomy website.