Honey bees (Apis mellifera) are eusocial insects that exhibit striking caste-specific differences in longevity. Queen honey bees live on average 1–2 years whereas workers live on average 15–38 days in the summer and 150–200 days in the winter.
During the active season, the lifetime of a worker is five to six weeks. Overwintering worker bees may, however, live for four to six months. Whatever their life span, worker bees usually confine themselves to one task at a time, working without pause.
The average lifespan of a honey bee is between eight weeks to five years, depending on the type of bee it is. Drone bees have a lifespan of around eight weeks. Worker bees can live for up to six weeks in the summer and up to five months or more in the winter.
Honeybees are social insects that exhibit striking caste-specific differences in longevity. While honeybee queens can live up to 5 years, workers usually only live two to six weeks in the summer and about 20 weeks in the winter [20].
Bee Lifespan: Honeybee
In some cases, queens have been known to live for up to six years! Honeybees are 'superorganisms' because of their complex, well-structured colonies.
Honeybees sleep between 5 & 8 hours a day. More rest at night when darkness prevents them going out to collect pollen & nectar.
In Europe alone, 84% of the 264 crop species and 4,000 plant varieties exist thanks to pollination by bees. Some attribute the following quote to Albert Einstein: "If the bee disappeared off the face of the Earth, man would only have four years left to live.
When a queen bee dies the worker bees will become agitated and more aggressive with no direction from their monarch. Because of the lack of a queen substance pheromone, worker bees will begin to lay eggs. As worker bees are unable to fertilize eggs the hive begins to produce too many male drones.
In cumulative hours, honey bees sleep between five and eight hours a day, similar to the number of hours humans sleep. But unlike humans, who tend to sleep in one continuous stretch, honey bees take several “naps” within a 24-hour period.
Bees eat honey and bee bread. Bee bread provides protein, while honey is a source of carbohydrates. Both pollen and honey contain minerals, vitamins, and enzymes.
Even without a queen, a honey bee can complete her normal adult lifespan of about four-to-six weeks. However, the colony she belongs to will not be able to survive more than a couple of months unless the queen is quickly replaced. Without a new queen, the colony will dwindle as the members die one-by-one.
Queens are raised from the same fertilised female eggs as workers bees. A newly hatched female larva is neither queen or worker caste. There are small differences in the composition of royal jelly fed to larvae destined to be a queen or a worker. The variation in diet starts from the time of larvae hatching.
Three of the most commonly encountered bees by homeowners are honey bees, carpenter bees and bumble bees. These bees usually become active in the spring with the warm weather and flowering of plants. They remain active throughout the summer and into the fall.
Australia has over 1,600 species of native bees and only eleven of these species are stingless! These are the social native bees, Tetragonula and Austroplebeia. All the other native bee species in Australia can sting. Most are too small to deliver an effective sting and Australian native bees are not aggressive.
After they do their job they die. A honey bee can fly for up to six miles, and as fast as 15 miles per hour.
The bee hunches over, lowering its head to the silicone. Its mouth opens and closes, kissing the ground. This is its final gesture before it dies. Inside its body, the two glands in its venom sac are releasing liquids that, alone, are not harmful.
The tradition holds that bees, as members of the family, should be informed of major life events in the family, especially births and deaths. Beekeepers would knock on each hive, deliver the news and possibly cover the hive with a black cloth during a mourning period.
Older worker bees will reject queens that they are not familiar with and tend to view them as a colony invader, even when they have no hope of raising a new queen on their own. This is especially true if the queen is unmated, or not well-mated, with numerous drones from unrelated colonies.
Seeing a bee means good news is on the way. They also symbolize the soul. When you see a bee, it lets you know new life is all around you. Whether that means new opportunities or new friendships, let your path blossom.
Virtually all European honey bees are highly vulnerable to Varroa mites, although some honey bee strains (VSH, Russians) show partial resistance to the mites. This mite weakens honey bees by sucking hemolymph (“blood”) from its host and by transmitting bee pathogens.
A honeybee might work anywhere from just a few hours a day to about 12, depending on its role in the beehive. For example, worker bees tasked with the daily foraging of nectar or pollen generally spend nearly every hour of daylight outside—but as soon as it gets dark they get to head back to the nest and relax.
It is able to survive near-freezing temperatures due to dense hair that traps heat and its ability to use conical flowers, like the Arctic poppy, to magnify the sun's rays to warm itself up. Rocketing temperatures in the Arctic, however, mean the bee is likely to become extinct by 2050.
Put simply, we cannot live without bees. The United States Department of Agriculture estimates that pollinators like bees and butterflies help pollinate approximately 75 percent of the world's flowering plants. They pollinate roughly 35 percent of the world's food crops—including fruits and vegetables.
In terms of agriculture, the loss of bees would dramatically alter human food systems but would not likely lead to famine. The majority of human calories still come from cereal grains, which are wind-pollinated and are therefore unaffected by bee populations.