Thursday, 1 September 2016

How does a bee develop

Bees are social insects that live in organised groups called colonies. Each colonies live in a hive and each hive has one queen, some drones or male bees, and lots of worker bees. It i the drones job to mate with the queen so that she can lay eggs.  

A queen bee will begin laying eggs 10 days after mating. Each egg will be placed in a cell in the comb. She will lay about 3000 eggs a day for the rest of her life, about 2 years and she will never leave the hive.

Four days after being laid, the eggs will hatch. At this stage they are called larvae. The larvae will be fed ‘bee bread’ which is a of nectar and pollen.

On the ninth day after hatching, the larvae cell will be covered with wax as they begin the transformation into a pupa. During this stage, the pupa will not eat.

Finally after 21 days from the beginning of the life cycle, the pupa opens and an adult worker bee emerges, ready to begin life collecting pollen to make honey for the hive.

The life cycle for bees in known as metamorphosis.