The Process of Honey Bees

Guisti Savanna Clarke

Professor: Dr. Tolaram

English 2222

March 7th 2016

The Process of Honey Bees

General Purpose: To inform the audience of the honey bee hierarchy and how it is processed.

Thesis:         Though honey bees live an organized lifestyle in their hierarchy of structure, each bee goes through a step by step process in order to survive.

INTRODUCTION 

1. Just like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, honey bees also have a functional structure that they follow in order to stay alive.

1. Each of us have our daily rituals that keeps us going, this process allows us to satisfy our wants and needs, and just like honey bees we have instincts that keep us alive.

1. Though honey bees live an organized lifestyle in their hierarchy of structure, each bee goes through a step by step process in order to survive. Honey bees use different tactics and functions based on their duty, the three main topics that will be discussed are:

1.  The honey bee colony.

1. The Queen bee.

1.  The three stages of development that all types of bees pass through before emerging as an adult.

Transition:         The first area of discussion will be about the honey bee colony.

BODY

1. The honey bee colony consists of three kinds of adult bees: workers, drones, and a queen.

1.  The worker bees are sexually undeveloped females that do not lay eggs. These workers have specialized structures such as brood food glands, wax glands, and pollen baskets which allow them to perform all the labors in the hive.

1. Drones are male bees which are the largest in the colony. Unlike worker bees they do not have pollen baskets or wax glands. Their main function is to fertilize the virgin queen during the mating season. Once a drone has mated they instantly die.

1. According to Mid – Atlantic Apiculture Research:  it is stated that although drones perform no useful work for the hive, their presence is believed to be important for normal colony functioning.

Transition: The honey bee colony only consists of one queen bee.

1. Each colony has only one queen.

1. Since the queen is the only sexually developed female, her primary function is reproduction. The queen leaves the hive for approximately 13 minutes and mates with 7 – 15 drones in the afternoon. The drones are able to recognize the queen by her chemical odor.

1. Queens lay the greatest number of eggs in the spring and early summer, during the peak of production, queens may lay up to 1,500 eggs per day. (About Honey Bees.)

1. The second major function of the queen is producing pheromones that serve as a social glue unifying and helping to give individual identity to a bee colony.

Transition: When the queen reproduces the egg must go through three stages of development before emerging as an adult bee.

 III. All three types of adult bees pass through three development stages before emerging as adults they are: egg, larva and prepupae.

1. While the development stages are similar, they do differ in duration. Unfertilized eggs become drones, while fertilized eggs become either workers or queens.  

1. During the larval stage, they are fed by adult worker bees while still inside their beeswax cells. (About Honey Bees.)

1. Within the individual cells capped with a beeswax cover provided by adult worker bees, the prepupae begin to change from their larval form to adult bees.

Transition: After stating each process of the three different bees we now know that each bee has an important role to the colony in keeping their hierarchy intact.        

CONCLUSION

1. In conclusion each adult bee uses different processes and is made specifically based on their duty to the colony.

1. For example, worker bees are the only bees in the colony that have specialized structures such as a wax glands, brood food glands and pollen baskets. Other bees like drones only have one specific task which is to mate with the queen and watch the workers work.

1. An African proverb states that it takes a whole village to raise a child, and this goes hand in hand with honey bees working together in the colony to keep things in order.

REFERENCES

  "National Geographic." National Geographic. N.p., 2 July 2009. Web. 25 Feb.