Topic Content:
- Castes of honey bees
- drones, queens, and workers
- roles and functions
- drones, queens, and workers
- Economic importance of Honey Bees

Castes of Honey Bees:
A colony of bees consists of three castes of bees. These are:
A Queen Bee:
This is the only breeding female in the colony. The queen is the only sexually mature female in the hive and all the female worker bees and male drones are her offspring. The queen may live for up to three years or more and may be capable of laying half a million eggs or more in her lifetime. The queen is raised from a normal worker egg but is fed a larger amount of royal jelly than a normal worker bee, resulting in radically different growth and metamorphosis. The queen influences the colony by the production and dissemination of a variety of “pheromones” or “queen substance”. One of the chemicals suppresses the development of ovaries in all the female worker bees in the hive and prevents them from laying eggs.
The Worker Bee:
Worker bees are the most numerous members of the colony. A healthy colony may contain 80,000 worker bees or more at its peak growth in early summer. Workers build and maintain the nest and care for the brood.
The worker bees build the nest from wax secreted from glands in their abdomen. The hexagonal cells, or compartments, constructed by the workers are arranged in a latticework known as the Comb. The cells of the comb provide the internal structure of the nest and are used for storage of the developing young bees and all the provisions used by the colony. The comb, used for the storage of honey, is called a honeycomb.
Workers leave the hive to gather nectar, pollen, water and propolis, a gummy substance used to seal and caulk the exterior of the nest. They convert the nectar to honey, clean the comb and feed the larvae, drones and the queen. They also ventilate the nest and when necessary, defend the colony with their wings. Workers do not mate and therefore, cannot produce fertile eggs. They occasionally lay infertile eggs, which give rise to drones.
As with all bees, pollen is the principal source of protein, fat, minerals and vitamins, the food elements essential for the growth and development of larvae of all three castes. Adult bees can subsist on honey or sugar, a pure carbohydrate diet.
Besides gathering and storing food for all the members of the colon, the workers are responsible for maintaining the brood at 33.9ºC, the optimum temperature required for hatching the eggs and rearing the young. When the nest or hive becomes too hot the workers collectively ventilate it by fanning their wings. During cool weather, they cluster tightly about the nurseryNursery, in agriculture, is a place where young plants are raised under intensive management practices for later transplanting into permanent fields/plot. It is also referred to as a place where young... More and generate heat.
The eggs, which are laid one per cell, hatch in three days. The larvae are fed royal jelly for at least two days and then pollen and nectar or honey. Each of the hundreds of larvae in a nest or hive must be fed many times a day.
For the first three weeks of their adult lives, the workers confine their labours to;
- building the honeycomb,
- cleaning and polishing the cells,
- feeding the young and the queen,
- controlling the temperature,
- evaporating the water from the nectar until it thickens as honey,
- and many other miscellaneous tasks.
At the end of this period, they function as field bees and defenders of the colony. The workers that develop early in the season live extremely busy lives, which from egg to death, last about six weeks. Worker bees reared late in the fall usually live until spring since they have little to do in the winter except eat and keep warm. Unlike other species of bees, honey bees do not hibernate; the colony survives the winter as a group of active adult bees.
Worker bees are differentiated into sanitary bees (early few days), nurse bees (first month, feeding larvae and queen), farmer bees, guard bees, builder bees (producing bee wax, building and repairing of the hive) and foragers (collecting honey).
The Drone Bee:
Drones are male bees. They are stingless, defenceless and unable to feed themselves, they are fed by worker bees. Drones have no pollen baskets or wax glands and cannot secrete royal jelly. Their one function is to mate with new queens. After mating, which always takes place on the wing in the open air, a drone dies immediately. Early investigators of the mating habits of the honey bee concluded that a queen mates only once in her life. Recent scientific studies, however, have established that she usually mates with six or more drones in the course of a few days.
The motilecapable of motion. More sperm of the drones find their way into a small, sac-like organ, called the spermatheca, in the queen’s abdomen. The sperm remains viable in this sac throughout the life of the queen.
Drones are prevalent in colonies of bees in the spring and summer months. As fall approaches, they are driven out of the nests or hives by the workers and left to perish.
Economic importance of Honey Bees:
Beekeeping is of great importance and such benefits include:
1. Income Generation: When offered for sale or export, honey and other products generate income for farmers.
2. Provision of Food: Honey which is the main product derived from beekeeping is consumed locally as food.
3. Medicinal Purposes: Honey and other associated products are also to be used in the preparation of medical items that are useful to humans. For example;
- Honey bee venom contains a mixture of proteins which can potentially be used as a prophylactic to destroy HIV which causes AIDS in humans.
- Bee venom contains natural substances that may help alleviate joint pain and inflammation associated with arthritis.
- Recent studies have indicated that the active compound in bee venom, melittin, may be useful as a therapeutic treatment for chronic diseases.
- Some clinical research shows that honey may help heal wounds and burns, fight infections, and alleviate cold and flu symptoms.
4. Employment: Beekeeping is a source of employment as it generates income for many people from production to marketing of the products.
5. Industrial Purpose: Honey is used for many industrial purposes e.g. production of cosmetics.
6. Production of Wax: Beekeeping also helps to produce a special substance called wax. Bee wax is very important for the production of candles.
7. Production of Crops: Honey bees cross-pollinateCross-pollination is the transfer of pollen from the anther of one flower to the stigma of another flower on a different individual of the same species. More flowers to produce fruits and seeds for growing crops. To farmers, honey bees are worth billions of naira. In fact, farmers rent honey bee colonies from apiculturists for this specific purpose.