HONEY BEE BIOLOGY/ECOLOGY Terry Ryan Kane DVM, MS A2 Bee Vet Ann Arbor, MI 48103 www.a2beevet.com Honey bees are the most complicated social insect having co-evolved with angiosperms (flowering plants) over the last 100M years. They are found in every continent where there are flowers. Flowering plants attract pollinators with their floral arrangements, odor, nectar and pollen. Some plants and pollinators are so interdependent that their flower parts and mouth parts fit each other such that some pollinators have flower fidelity. Some, like honey bees, are generalists and will feed on multiple types of flower food. One of the most unique and wondrous behaviors of honey bees, the “waggle dance”, the way the foragers communicate food resource information, was described by Karl Von Frisch in his book “The Dance Language and Orientation of Bees”. Published in 1965 it was the culmination of 50 years of research and earned him the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1973 for Animal Behavior (he shared the Nobel with two other pioneers in animal behavior, Nicolaas Tinbergen and Konrad Lorenz). Bee communication is one of the most interesting things about them. Remember they are in the dark. Like cave animals they rely on smell, touch, and vibration in the hive. They also produce a myriad of pheromones that modulate behavior. There are 25,000 species of bees in the world, 5000 species of native bees, and 46 species of bumble bees in the U.S. The western honey bee, Apis mellifera, is an introduced species to North America. Hives were brought here by colonists and missionaries in the 1700s. By the 1800s they were found as far west as California and by the early 1920s as far north as Alaska. Bees are the most important pollinators of flowers, over 80% of plant species and hundreds of our fruit, nut, and vegetable crops need insect pollination. They are a key component of our agriculture ecosystems. In Michigan, pollination is a $1B industry. Not only do honey bees and native bees provide pollination but they provide food for our birds, many mammals and predatory insects. The ground dwelling native bees contribute to soil structure and cycle soil nutrients. On top of that, all the fruits, nuts and vegetables that result from insect pollination provide the proteins, vitamins and minerals so important to health for thousands of other animals, including us. No wonder bees have been dubbed the world’s most important animals! Most native bees are ground dwellers and - Do not live in colonies or have a queen - Generally non-aggressive and don’t sting - Do not produce honey or wax - Do not have pollen baskets - Often nest close together - Nest in a variety of places, underground, hollows, brush piles, logs - In the Spring, males emerge first and feed - Females then emerge, mate and find a nest site - Males die after mating - Male eggs are laid in the front, female eggs in the back - Provide larvae with pollen/nectar - Larvae develop, pupate, emerge the following Spring Native bees are important pollinators as well, but it is the honey bee that is our #1 managed pollinator because they can be housed and moved. Honey bees have a unique history with humans going as far back as 15,000 years ago. The Egyptians were the first ‘commercial’ beekeepers They are the only insect that provides food products that we consume (propolis, pollen, wax, comb, honey) and are now classified as food animals under the new FDA guidelines. We do not treat individual bees, rather this is a herd health practice. The colony is considered a ‘superorganism’, and it is the colony itself that is the patient. The honey bees’ natural hive are tree holes. They require @18L volume with a small entrance. There has been an evolution of hive designs and the most common is the Langstroth hive. Invented by Lorenzo Langstroth, a Philadelphia minister, he patented this new design in 1851 and we still use it today. It was unique because for the first-time honey could be collected without destroying the hive. His design was like a filing cabinet, vertical frames that the bees could draw out comb on, that could be examined, and replaced. Rev. Langstroth coined the term “bee space”, the space between these frames that bees could move around on. There are many hive designs, but this remains the most common. There are 3 caste members in each colony: 1. First and foremost is the worker bee, a sterile, diploid female. She has a stinger. Honey bees can only sting once and they die, unlike yellow jackets that can sting multiple times. The worker bees (12-15mm) are the engine of the hive and have multiple jobs throughout their developmental life span. One of their jobs is thermoregulation, keeping the hive cool in the summer and warm in the winter at @ 90-980 F year around. As they age, their jobs change from ‘house’ bees to foragers, living 4-6 weeks once they fly outside the hive. In the fall, winter bees are produced by the hive. These workers have more fat stores to survive the months of winter. 2. The male bee is called a drone. He is larger than a worker and has very large eyes. He does not have a stinger. His only function is to mate with a virgin Queen and then he dies. The drones comprise only @ 5% of the hive population. Most of the drones are kicked out of the hive when winter approaches. 3. The Queen is the largest bee, she is the mother of the colony. She does have a small stinger. A few days after she emerges as an adult and her wings are dry, the virgin Queen goes on a mating flight and mates with a dozen or so drones over a period of 1-2 days. The virgin queen flies away from her home hive, high up in the air (which is why drones need big eyes) at the ‘drone congregation site’. She can store up to 5-7M spermatozoa over her lifetime and lay 1000-2000 eggs/day. She is always surrounded by a retinue of attendant worker bees that feed her and clean her. She only leaves the hive that one time to mate and again to swarm. Although queens can live 2-5 years, most beekeepers replace their Queens every 1-2 years for maximum fertility. If the Queen lays a fertilized egg it develops into a worker bee (female). If the Queen lays an unfertilized egg it becomes a drone. Each egg develops in 3 days. There are 5 larval instars, then the last instar is capped and develops into a pupa. The different castes have different developmental periods. A Queen is fed only royal jelly and emerges after 16 days, a worker after 21 days and a drone after 23-24 days. These numbers are important to breeders and management strategies. identical to Worker bees Nutrition determines polymorphism • The Larvae that develop into Queens or Workers are genetically identical • Royal Jelly diet results in Queen development • Honey and bee bread diet results in workers and drones • Worker bees are sterile diploid females • Drones are haploid males • Behavior (phenotype) influenced by nutrition • Pheromone development dependent on nutrition • mRNA in flowers also affects development Worker bee sub castes after days of emergence: 1-2 days Cleaning the cells, attending the queen 3-5 days Caring for brood, feeding larvae beebread and capping cells 6-11 days Feeding young larvae royal jelly if designated to be queens 12-17 days Producing was for building cells, transporting food within the hive 18-21 days Guard bees at the entrance and ventilate the hive 22-45 days Foragers Honey bees do not hibernate in the winter. In the fall, the colony produces “winter bees”. Unlike the summer foragers that may live 1-6 weeks depending on weather, predation by birds, disease, the winter bees have large fat body stores that allow them to live through the winter months. Inside the hive the bees work to keep the colony warm, the Queen attended and use the stores of honey and pollen for energy. In the early spring, the queen starts laying again, new honey bees emerge and the population grows rapidly. Natural reproduction of the colony takes place in spring through swarming. The “old” queen leaves the hive with part of the workers while scouts look for a new home. Beekeepers love to catch these spring swarms, “free bees”! This last year we saw swarming late into the summer. Royal Jelly diet results in References/Suggested Reading The Dance Language and Orientation of Bees. Karl von Frisch. Translated from the German edition (Berlin, 1965) by Leigh E. Chadwick. Belknap Press (Harvard University Press), Cambridge, Mass., 1967. xiv + 566 pp., illus. Honey Bee Veterinary Medicine: Apis mellifera L. by Nicolas Vidal-Naquet (2015) Honey Bee Democracy by Thomas D. Seeley The Lives of Bees, The Untold Story of Honey Bees in the Wild, by Thomas D. Seeley The Bee, A Natural History by Noah Wilson-Rich Bees in Your Backyard: A Guide to North America’s Bees, by Joseph S. Willson, Olivia J. Messinger Carril Beekeeping for Dummies by Howland Blackiston The Bee Book by Emma Sarah Tennant .