The family of bees

Bees are social insects and individual bees cannot survive alone. The entire bee colony is composed of three different types of individuals, namely the queen bee, the drone and the worker bee. A colony of bees has only one queen bee. During the breeding season, there are hundreds of drones. Worker bees are the most numerous members of the colony, reaching 20,000 to 50,000. The queen bee and worker bees are female, while the male bees are male, so bees are a typical female society. Bees have a complete social division of labor structure. The queen bee is dedicated to laying eggs, while the male bee is responsible for mating with the virgin queen and does no other work. In the colony, except for reproduction, all the work inside and outside the hive is handled by worker bees.

Male bee
Queen Bee
Worker bee

The queen bee is a fully developed female bee in the colony. Her reproductive organs are fully developed. In the colony, she is like an egg-laying machine. When the colony is in its peak reproductive period, she can lay about one to two eggs per minute, and more than 1,500 to 2,000 eggs in a day. The total weight of the eggs she lays is even greater than that of the queen bee. Such a vigorous egg-laying capacity This is attributed to its own special structure and the continuous supply of royal jelly by worker bees. During egg-laying, the queen bee's abdomen is elongated and plump, longer than that of worker bees, even twice as long. The strength of egg-laying ability is related to the prosperity or decline of bee colonies. Only strains with excellent genetic traits can enhance the productivity of bee colonies. The selection of superior queen bees is the constant pursuit of beekeepers.

Queen Bee

The queen bee is the leader of the colony, and there is always a group of guards around her to protect the safety of the queen bee and clean her body surface.

Male bee

Male bees have a strong build, with highly developed compound eyes. Their heads are almost entirely occupied by compound eyes. The tail end of their abdomens is slightly round. They have no stingers but well-developed mating organs. It has extremely strong flying ability and can chase the virgin queen bee in the vast sky and mate with her. Male bees develop from unfertilized eggs and have a single set of chromosomes, which directly affect the genetic traits of their offspring and are related to the prosperity and decline of the bee colony as well as the harvest of beekeepers. During the breeding period, bee colonies produce a large number of drones to facilitate the spread and reproduction of the colonies.

The hind tibia of a male bee

does not have a pollen basket

A cross-sectional view of a male bee's hive

Although a bee colony is divided into three classes, all the work both inside and outside the nest is carried out by worker bees. When we observe a bee colony, we will find that each worker bee is quite busy at work, seemingly disorganized and disorderly, but in fact, each individual is performing its own duties in an orderly manner. The division of labor among worker bees is based on their age and can be divided into house bees and field bees.

Worker bee
Office Bee
After emerging, the adult bee spends the first half of its life performing tasks inside the nest, including cleaning the cells, raising the larvae, building the cells, repairing the honeycomb, receiving nectar, and handling pollen. The work of removing waste and protecting the bee colony, etc., is called the housekeeping bee.
Within the first three days of emergence, worker bees mainly carry out the task of cleaning the cells. This is the situation where worker bees remove the corpses of dead larvae from the cells.
Worker bees secrete beeswax to build new cells, repair old cells and seal them. Worker bees aged 7 to 21 days have fully developed four pairs of wax glands in their abdomens and can secrete beeswax.
After receiving the nectar collected by the forager bees, the house bees find an appropriate position to carry out the honey-making work.
The worker bees on guard duty will all point their heads outward to observe the conditions around the hive.
Six days after emergence, worker bees are responsible for feeding the larvae and are also known as young bees. The mandibular glands and hypopharyngeal glands in its head begin to function and can secrete food for the larvae to feed the young larvae.
Worker bees are using propolis and
beeswax to reinforce the nest frame.
Field bee
In the second half of their lives, they go out to gather nectar and are called field bees. Before taking on field work, one would first conduct a positioning flight in front of the beehive, which is called "patrolling the hive", to familiarize oneself with the surrounding environment of the hive. Usually, after leaving the nest, they fly around several times in the air before returning. Each time they go out, they gradually expand the range of their flight and the duration of their stay. The age at which the collection work is carried out varies greatly, ranging from ten to twenty days. The collection work involves gathering nectar and water, loading them into honey stomachs and carrying them back, while pollen and propolis are carried back by pollen baskets.
Forager bees place the propolis they have collected on a pollen basket and carry it back to the hive.
Water is an important substance for bee colonies to regulate the temperature and humidity inside the nest. This is a worker bee that extends its mouthparts to collect water.
Worker bees that go deep into the sunflowers to collect pollen.
During the transitional period between office work and field work, worker bees will first conduct test flights in front of the entrances and exits of the beehive. The test-flying individuals will fly up, down, left and right facing the beehive to get familiar with the surrounding environment.
The types of bees
Today, it is generally recognized that there are nine species in the genus Apius, namely the giant bee, the black giant bee, the small bee, the black small bee, the Western bee, the Eastern bee, the Sabah bee, the green bee and the Sulawassi bee. There are abundant wild colonies of large bees, black large bees, small bees, black small bees and Oriental bees in places like Xishuangbanna in our country. Oriental bees and Western bees have been widely domesticated. The Chinese honeybee (referred to as the Chinese honeybee, a subspecies of the Eastern honeybee) and the Italian honeybee (referred to as the Italian honeybee, a subspecies of the Western honeybee) are the two dominant bee species in China.
Six types of worker bees:
1. Big bee 2. Little bee 3. Chinese honeybee 4. Big black bee 5. Little black bee 6. Italian bee
Large bees often build single honeycombs in the middle of curved and wide leaves or under suspended rocks,
storing up to 25 to 40 kilograms of honey, with the upper honeycombs being over 10cm thick.
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