HIVE
The hive has its magical structure,
Each bee does its job. This is how our team is made up.
in Antonieta Raw Honey.
What does the queen bee do?
The queen, ruler of the hive, is a fascinating figure in the world of bees. Her life is full of mysteries and functions that ensure the survival of the colony. She is the only fertile female in the hive, and her role is fundamental to the reproduction and balance of the colony. She feeds exclusively on royal jelly, which gives her surprising longevity, living up to 5 years, while worker bees only live about 45 to 50 days.
Her legs are longer, and her stinger is only used against other queens. The queen has the ability to control the sex of her offspring; if she places a fertilized egg in a cell, a worker will be born. If she places it in a cell called the queen cell, a queen will be born.
For a drone to hatch, the egg must be unfertilized and in a larger cell than the worker bees. When the queen ages, she is no longer efficient, and the worker bees take action. They build queen cells, and when a new queen is born, the older queen leaves the hive and settles elsewhere, or the bees eliminate her out of survival instinct.
Who are the workers in the hive?
The colony is inhabited by more than 10,000 of these bees, which live from 6 weeks to 6 months.
They collect nectar and pollinate flowers, and provide food for the queen bee and her young (royal fodder).
The workers are artists who build wax panels made of hexagonal prismatic cells. They clean and protect the hive.
What is the mission of the drones?
They are the only males in the colony and die after fertilizing the queen. Their population numbers in the hundreds in a hive.
They have no sting and their wings are broader. Larvae from fertilized eggs give rise to females. Unfertilized eggs develop into drones.
What is Beekeeping?
Beekeeping is the activity dedicated to raising bees and providing them with the necessary care in order to obtain and consume the products they are capable of producing and collecting.
In general, traces of knowledge of bees and the rational exploitation of honey and wax have always been found in the stories of the most advanced societies of all times.
For example, the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans made them an object of worship. Beekeeping reached its peak when the only known sweetener was honey.
The discovery of America and the planting of sugarcane significantly diminished the importance of beekeeping. However, its practice has not ceased.
Modern or mobile beekeeping begins with the creation of honeycombs in mobile frames, so that they are not destroyed when harvesting honey. It reached its peak in the late 19th and early 20th centuries thanks to Jan Dzierzon and other great researchers of the noble art of beekeeping.
What is the Bridal Dance?
Flight is a type of mating that takes place in the air, in full flight and at an altitude of approximately 700 meters.
During this fertilization flight, the queen bee copulates with 15-16 drones and fills her spermatheca, after which she returns to the hive.
The queen and drones travel up to 12 km from the hive to meet. Mating occurs in locations that remain constant over generations. This ensures that related species do not interbreed, preventing inbreeding. Before copulation, up to 100 drones follow her like the trail of a comet.
The drone chases the queen and mounts her in flight from behind, extracting the copulatory organ with a snap and reinserting it, pumping all its blood. It then dies and falls to the ground. The queen will fly with other drones until she has stored a sufficient amount of sperm in her spermatheca.
Once mating is successful, the queen fully matures her ovaries and begins laying eggs.
