FREE ESSAY ON WORKER BEES

WORKER BEES

THE BEE ESSAY
The worker bees live a very short life. Their average life span is about six weeks. The
worker bees are the sterile females of the bee population. They feed honey and pollen to
the queen of the hive. The worker bees are called nurse bees when they enter into this
stage. They produce a jelly called royal jelly which is high in protein. They give this
royal jelly to the queen bee and she feeds it to her young ones. Then worker bees start
to produce a honeycomb from the wax that they secrete. During this stage they can also
fan their wings to circulate fresh air. The house bee is a young worker be about 2 weeks
old bee who only works in the hive.
The queen bee is the head honcho of the whole hive. The queen really doesn't do much. She
sits in the hive and has the babies. The queen secretes a substance called queen factor
which keeps all of the other female bees from becoming sexually mature. The queen is fed
royal jelly to further her development as she becomes a grown bee. The queen's number one
priority is to reproduce. Once she successfully does that, her job is pretty much done
with. The queen is very special because she can do all of her mating in the air. The
queen only mates once in her life, but in that one mating session she can produce as many
as a million eggs a year. When the queen feels that the hive is getting crowded, she
ventures off into the wilderness with a few of her worker bees to search for a new
beginning (a new hive). Then, when the queen dies another queen will take her place and
start the whole thing all over again.
The drones are also placed on this earth for one main reason. That reason is to satisfy
the queen. Drones are unfertilized eggs whose jobs consist of supplying the queen bee
with the sperm when she is ready. Then the drones are either eaten by the queen or stung
by the workers and evicted from their home. They live a very tragic life. The drone's
structure is also kind of odd because the drone does not possess a stinger. So, they
cannot really protect themselves when they need to.
The queen bee releases a substance called queen factor which is a pheromone. When she
releases this substance, the other bee's behavior is affected. They act as if they were
under the influence. They really are because the queen factor acts as a drug in that it
affects the way that their body functions. The queen also causes the bees to march in a
line as if they were in a marching band. What they are doing is following the queen
factor. 
Bees communicate by special dances that they perform for special occasions. This may seem
kind of odd, but this is actually true. German biologist Karl von Frisch first discovered
these special dances after 25 years of hard research. The bees do the dance according to
their food source and it's position. They also involve the sun in their communicative
dances. The scout would go out and find some food and then return and do a dance like
motion. He would circle once to the left and then once to the right, and that is where we
got the name of the round dance. Another dance was also discovered. This dance was called
the waggle dance. The bee would go in a straight forward motion and waggle their little
abdomens. Later, we discovered that the round dance was a dance done for food sources
closest to the hive, but the waggle dance was performed for food sources closest to the
sun.. They do these dances to communicate to the other bees and tell them if the food
source is either close to the hive or closer to the sun.