The bees behaviour When the worker honeybee emerges from its cell, by biting around the capping and squeezing itself through the hole, it is slightly lighter in colour and more hairy than its older sisters. Young adults often take quite a while to get out of their cells because the other workers take little or no notice of them, and trample around on their heads quite happily. But eventually they draw themselves out of the cells rather like drawing a cork, and you might almost expect to hear a 'pop'. They are a bit staggery on their feet and of course quite useless to the colony; their glands are not working, they cannot sting, and the only work possible for them to do is cleaning up, which is just the job they do for the first three or four days. During this time they are being fed by the other bees and their glands become activated and ready for use so that by the end of the cleaning up periods their bodies are fully hardened and in full working order; indeed they will usually take a short, few minutes flight, not to forage for anything but just a trial flight around the hive: what the beekeepers call a 'play flight'. Now the bee is ready to do any job required by the colony and, as observation has shown, it does a number of different jobs during the course of each day. In the normal colony there is a very loose progression through different jobs, according to age. This progression is cleaning, feeding larvae, manipulating wax, processing honey, and guard duty. However, any job can be done at any time and the needs of the colony are paramount. This indoor work continues for about the first twenty days of adult life, and during this time the beekeeper talks of the bee as a 'house bee' or a 'nurse bee'. After this it becomes a forager or 'flying bee' and its life style alters completely. Behaviour of house bees Many old grannies used to talk about the 'busy bee improving the shining hour'. I am afraid they were a long way out as far as I can see: the worker bee does not put in as many hours each day as most of us humans. The other thing is that it sadly lacks concentration and the ability to stick at a job for any length of time: observations have shown that it rarely stays working at a job for more than half an hour. Its day consists of resting, walking about and working in about equal proportions, but these are not done in large blocks of time but for a few minutes to half an hour at a time, and the three types of activity occur randomly. An observation hive gives one a chance to see all types of behaviour all the time. Resting bees often take up the most grotesque attitudes, with legs stuck out at queer angles and bodies jammed into corners, and one favourite place seems to be with their heads jammed between the top of the high domed drone cells and the glass. The bees which are on 'walk about' seem to do so with no particular aim but this activity includes several very important pieces of behaviour. Probably the most notable of these is the continual offering, and accepting, of food between individuals. This goes on to such an extent that every bee has very largely the same substances in its gut as every other bee. Not only is food passed around at this time but also chemicals known as 'pheromones', some of which are obtained by licking the queen and which control some of the behaviour patterns of the workers. As the bees walk around they also look into cells and come into contact with larvae that need feeding, ones which need to be sealed over, comb building, repairs, and all the work of the hive. It is possible that this continual recurring contact with the various needs of the colony will cause them to do the work that is required—a direct stimulus-response type of behavioural control. They also perform various dances which as yet mean little to us but must contain specific messages. Two of these dances are generally occurring at all times. One, where a worker does a sort of jerky, jitterbug dance on the spot, may be a request for grooming, as often another bee will dash over and start to nibble the dancer, particularly between the thorax and abdomen. Perhaps this is the bee equivalent of the spot between our shoulder blades: so difficult to scratch. In the second dance a bee rushes about all over the place, stopping occasionally to push its head against another bee, or to mount slightly on to its back, vigorously vibrating its body up and down all the while. It has been suggested that this has something to do with swarming, but I think it is too general in occurrence for this, and certainly does occur when there is no evidence of queen-cell production, either current or imminent. These 'walk about' periods of The queen surrounded by her retinue of workers, who are licking and grooming her. She is being fed by the central bee at the top of the picture while two other workers lean over to communicate with the queen, using their antennae. You can see the red tongue of the central bee on the right licking the abdomen of the queen and obtaining queen substance. The worker at top left shows the modified biting mouthparts, or mandibles, which are spoon-shaped in the worker so that they can manipulate wax. Eggs can be seen in some of the lower cells and three cells are sealed. The rather rough-edged cell between the two sealed cells at lower right is one from which a worker has recently emerged, and which the cleaning bees have not yet tidied up. [...]... to bees, or if honey is spilled on the ground Once bees find honey (and in the latter part of the season it will only be a few moments before they will) they return to their colony with the spoils and dance, and within ten to fifteen minutes the whole area will be full of searching bees, trying to enter other colonies, and sheds and houses within a distance of 100 yards The person who left the honey. .. day, depending upon the race and strain This often amounts to far more than her own weight in eggs per day, and hence her need for large quantities of very easily-assimilated food The need is supplied by bee milk from the bees of her ever-changing retinue, with some honey to provide the energy to keep her going Although the queen has this limited spectrum of behaviour— mating and laying eggs of the right... hive it is using the force of gravity as its datum, and is indicating a direction in the field with the sun as its datum The rate at which the bee dances, the number of complete figures-of-eight covered in a unit of time, the length of time spent on the straight wagtail run, and the duration and frequency of a buzz produced during the straight wagtail part of the run are all correlated to the distance... between the trees within the row, bees tend to work up and down the rows with very few crossing from one row to another This is an important point to remember when pollination is required In dense forage such as clover or crucifers grown for seed, or dense stands of heather, bees tend to walk rather than fly from one group of flowers to another You may expect to see bees flying from one head of clover... oxydecenoic acid) produced in her mandibular glands, and they form a 'comet tail' behind the queen and chase her by sight once they get within about three feet of her The first drone to reach her is stimulated by another scent of unknown composition produced by the queen, which causes him to mate with her At the time of mating the drone genitalia enters the queen and literally explodes, separating... in density despite variations in size of queen and spermatheca Mating having been accomplished, the queen starts egg-laying within a few days, and is from then on very carefully looked after by the worker bees Up to the time of her mating they took little notice of her or were aggressive towards her, but now she produces a scent which causes them to turn and face her if she is close, thus forming the... it the information it requires Once the bee has become attached to a particular dance and subsequently to a particular patch of flowers of the same species, it tends to work these for the rest of its life This is a short time only, about fifteen days, and so the flowers will often persist for this length of time If, however, its particular species of flower comes to an end in the first few days of... normally, following the path shown Bees will be attracted to the dancer and will rush around after it trying to keep within antennatouch The whole dance is about 3/4 inch across and will move its fig 7a A bee performs the round dance, indicating forage close by, followed by four workers who will later leave to search for the food, b The wagtail dance indicates both the direction and distance of the food The... movements and learning from them information on the food source The more rewarding the source, the greater the vigour of the dance position as it is repeated The bees which have followed the dance receive a sample of nectar, or will smell the pollen load on the dancing bee's legs and rush out to see if they can find the source This is the dance which can initiate robbing in an apiary if honeycomb is... head of clover to the next, but if you look you will find them clambering about the maze of heads and leaves rather than in the air The queen and the drone Although the queen will live for several years she lives a much simpler life than a worker Her behaviour patterns are few and simple as far as we know, and she has not the wide abilities of the worker to deal with the general environment The queen . which can initiate robbing in an apiary if honeycomb is left open to bees, or if honey is spilled on the ground. Once bees find honey (and in the latter part of the season it will only be a few. denote submission and the guard, although biting and pulling at its wings and legs, and climbing all over it, will do no real harm and certainly not attempt to sting. As with all bees, the guard's. dry, and not too windy. The young bees in an apiary often seem to go for play flights at roughly the same time: it is quite startling when you first see the apiary a-buzz with thousands of bees