HORT 15 Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: Western Honey Bee, Worker Bee, Royal Jelly
Document Summary
Apis mellifera, the most common bees that are used for domesticated honey ( can survive our harsh winters ) The majority of bees are used for pollination. 3 types of bees inside a colony - worker, drone, and queen. Worker bees: do all the work, feed drones, young bees, and queen. Queen bees: starts the life the same as a worker bee but if fed a special diet called royal jelly. Develop much faster then the worker bees. May lay up to 1500 eggs per day in the summer. Produced pheromones that serve as a social glue that holds together and structures the colony. Drones - produced by unfertilized eggs, they hare haploid so they only contain cells from the queen. Their only job is to mate with the queen. The life cycle of a bee is 17-21 days.
