4.0 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE HONEYBEE
The candidate will be:
4.1 able to give an elementary account of the development of queens, workers and drones in the honeybee colony;
NOTES
All honeybees start their development from an egg laid by the queen.
For workers, a fertilised egg is laid in the base of a normal brood comb cell. The egg stands vertically at first but as it develops it falls over onto its side. After 3 days the egg hatches into a larval stage. The larva increases in size through a series of moults. At first it lies curled in the base of the cell then swells in size until it fills the entire cell. At ten days old the larva spins a cocoon in which to pupate (the cell is capped by workers at this stage). At 21 days an adult worker emerges from the pupa and chews its way out of the cell.
Drones develop from an unfertilised egg that is laid in a cell slightly larger than that of a worker. The same stages of development as for a worker apply to the drone but these take 3 days longer so that the adult drone emerges after 24 days. Drones are larger bodied than workers.
Eggs that will develop into queens are usually laid in a specially constructed cell, although ordinary worker cells can be adapted to raise queens. A queen cell starts as a cup shape. As the queen egg and larva develop, the cup is extended into a thimble shaped tapering tube. Queens also go through the stages of egg, larva, pupa and adult but develop faster than workers, taking 16 days to emerge. Queens are fed entirely on a food (bee milk or royal jelly) that is produced in special glands of the workers. It is entirely this feeding regime that makes a larva grow into a queen rather than a worker. All larvae are fed bee milk for the first 3 days. In an emergency, workers can continue to feed any very young larvae and these will develop into queens.