THE WORKING BEE

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 92, 15 October 1927, Page 27

THE WORKING BEE

DUTIES AT VARIOUS AGES

Hitherto it\has been an open question whether: the varying'activity of the -working bee is. limited to fixed groups or castes, or whether the" individual -bee undertakes a particular class of wort according to its age. The first suggestion'is not to be lightly set aside when we remember the divisions in the state of the ants—into soldiers, honey pots (live honey reserves), labourers, and so on. So it may also be possible that the working bees at different ages perform different functions —such as rearing, collecting honey, and cleaning the hive. Professor yon Prison, of the University of Munich, the well-known investigator of insect life, by marking indivdualbees and observing their movements, has found that the working bees as they grow older go through the whole series of operations generally carried out in a bee-hive (says "Modern Science"). With the exception of the work of the queen,* egg-laying, and the functions of the drones, fertilising, the working bees undertake all |hat the maintenance of the "state" requires. A newly enrolled bee at first proceeds without instruction to prepare the empty brooding, cells for receiving the eggs. It creeps into, the cells, and appears to lick the inner walls possibly to disinfect them with^a secretion. In due time these cleansed cells are endowed with eggs by the queen. When the young bees have been doing their work for two or three days they sit around the hatching cells and keep the brood warm. Then the young bee becomes nurse to the lavae, feeding them with pollen and. honey drawn from the storage cells. This work is continued for about seven days, after which the duty is taken over by . a younger generation. The young bee now becomes more lively, and "begins to take short nights of a few minutes' duration, keeping within Bight of the hivo. ' Its work, however, is still within the hive, and consists in removing pollen and honey brought in by the collecting bees, and conveying it either to the provision cells or to the brood nurses. The collecting bees merely pass in their booty and hurry away' on new flights. The next stage through ■which the young bee passes is that of hive cleaner. Its work now being to remove the waste matter of the hive. At.last the transfer to outside service begins. The bee becomes a guard. It takes up a post at the entrance and accosts ] every bee that appears in order, to taste and smell it. ■ If it is recognised zs a stranger to the hive, a fierce strugle ensues, and usually the invader is stung or otherwise forced away. On the twentieth day after birth or a little later, the house bee becomes a field bee, when it suddenly: comes'back from a trial flight with honey.