the honeybee is one of the most
collaborative insects in the world each
hive is comprised of thousands of bees
working together in order to build and
sustain a colony within the colony each
bee has a specific role to play a job
these are jobs like foraging for food
tending to young larvae and building a
honeycomb but with a brain about the
size of a sesame seed it begs the
question how do bees know what specific
job they need to do in order to keep a
balance in the hive the answer is
written into the genetic makeup of each
bee and it starts with the queen bee who
has the unique ability to designate the
sex of her children which plays a
pivotal role in their future if the
queen wants to lay a female egg she will
fertilize the egg by releasing
spermatozoa that is stored in the
spermatheca which sits behind her
ovaries the spermatheca is filled during
her first week of life when she mates
with up to 20 drones or male bees if the
Queen wants to lay a male egg
she will not release any spermatozoa as
the egg leaves the ovaries and drones
have a singular job that job is to mate
with Queens from other colonies to
propagate the species when they're not
trying to mate
they eat leisurely from the honey
reserves and wait for a queen to go on
her nuptial flight female bees or worker
bees do literally everything else they
keep the cells clean care for the larvae
build cells tend to the Queen store
honey forage pollinate guard the nest
and even feed male bees honey if they're
begging for it each bee knows what to do
because their hormones activate the part
of their genetic makeup that tells them
what jobs they have to tackle and when
they have to tackle it they go through
four phases of jobs before dying in
phase one bees go to work immediately
after they emerge from metamorphosis
about three weeks after they're born
they begin cleaning the cells from which
they emerge after about three days their
hormones shift them into nurse bee mode
in this job they feed the young brood
that succeeds them this lasts for about
a week then phase three kicks in and the
workers become general handyman moving
farther away from the center of the hive
and doing things like building honeycomb
storing food and guarding the nest
entrances this lasts about a week the
final phase is the most dangerous
it's the foraging feast where workers
leave the nest to find pollen to bring
home and feed the colony this phase
starts around day 41 and lasts until
about day 50 after a short life of
constant work most workers will leave
the nest as death approaches the corpses
of those that die inside the hive are
carried out by an undertaker bees it's a
thankless life for the worker bee
but this collaboration and process has
made them one of the most successful
super organisms in nature
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