During the active season, the lifetime of a worker is five to six weeks. Overwintering worker bees may, however, live for four to six months. Whatever their life span, worker bees usually confine themselves to one task at a time, working without pause.
Honey bees (Apis mellifera) are eusocial insects that exhibit striking caste-specific differences in longevity. Queen honey bees live on average 1–2 years whereas workers live on average 15–38 days in the summer and 150–200 days in the winter.
All bees go through four stages in their life cycle - egg > larva > pupa > adult. Native bees play a particularly important role in pollinating native plants and horticultural crops.
Honeybees sleep between 5 & 8 hours a day. More rest at night when darkness prevents them going out to collect pollen & nectar.
The average lifespan of a honey bee is between eight weeks to five years, depending on the type of bee it is. Drone bees have a lifespan of around eight weeks. Worker bees can live for up to six weeks in the summer and up to five months or more in the winter.
In Europe alone, 84% of the 264 crop species and 4,000 plant varieties exist thanks to pollination by bees. Some attribute the following quote to Albert Einstein: "If the bee disappeared off the face of the Earth, man would only have four years left to live.
When a queen bee dies the worker bees will become agitated and more aggressive with no direction from their monarch. Because of the lack of a queen substance pheromone, worker bees will begin to lay eggs. As worker bees are unable to fertilize eggs the hive begins to produce too many male drones.
Honey bee populations continue to decline, and the biggest threat to their health is the varroa mite, one of the world's tiniest and most destructive parasites. Varroa mites suck the blood of bees and transmit deadly viruses, making them one of the greatest threats to bees.
If a bee is out of the hive when a storm rolls in, it will seek shelter until the rain lessens and it's safe to fly home. If the bee is already in the hive when a storm hits, it will usually stay in until the rain subsides.
The bees can also be called guta or gila, possibly names for the three different species of native bee found in this area. Native bees have huge cultural significance to indigenous people from many parts of Australia, and have played a part in their culture for thousands of years.
Our social native bees are the Stingless Bees and they usually nest inside hollow trees. Two common species are Tetragonula carbonaria and Tetragonula hockingsi (previously called Trigona carbonaria and Trigona hockingsi*).
Australia has over 1,700 species of native bees. Only 11 of these species are stingless! These are the native honey-producing bees (Tetragonula - previously called Trigona -- and Austroplebeia). All of the other species of native bees in Australia can sting.
A queen mates during the first 1-2 weeks of her adult life. She can take multiple mating flights and mated with several males – on average 12-15. Increasing the genetic diversity of the colony is important for colony productivity and disease resistance.
Bees eat honey and bee bread. Bee bread provides protein, while honey is a source of carbohydrates. Both pollen and honey contain minerals, vitamins, and enzymes.
You know when a bee is sleeping because its antennae will stop moving, they tuck their head and tail in with their wings resting on their body. Female bees sleep in a nest but solitary male bees sleep outside and away from predators, hiding in grass or flowers.
Queen and worker bees will sting if they are threatened or handled. Bumble bees tend to be slow moving and very docile. The bees are more interested in flowers and pollen than they are in going after people.
So while bees cannot necessarily “smell” fear, they do have a way of detecting it and communicating that fear with the hive! One way bees do this is by emitting a specific pheromone to the rest of the hive, which is a chemical that alerts the rest of the colony that there is a threat.
Bees also have a distaste for lavender oil, citronella oil, olive oil, vegetable oil, lemon, and lime. These are all topical defenses you can add to your skin to keep bees away. Unlike other flying insects, bees are not attracted to the scent of humans; they are just curious by nature.
General honeybee aggression
Common sources of attack stimulus for honeybees include alarm pheromone, vibrations, carbon dioxide, hair, and dark colors (Crane 1990). This makes sense because mammals, which are common predators of bees, are usually hairy, dark colored, and exhale carbon dioxide.
Virtually all European honey bees are highly vulnerable to Varroa mites, although some honey bee strains (VSH, Russians) show partial resistance to the mites. This mite weakens honey bees by sucking hemolymph (“blood”) from its host and by transmitting bee pathogens.
A male drone will mount the queen and insert his endophallus, ejaculating semen. After ejaculation, a male honey bee pulls away from the queen, though his endophallus is ripped from his body, remaining attached to the newly fertilized queen.
Queens are raised from the same fertilised female eggs as workers bees. A newly hatched female larva is neither queen or worker caste. There are small differences in the composition of royal jelly fed to larvae destined to be a queen or a worker. The variation in diet starts from the time of larvae hatching.
The bee hunches over, lowering its head to the silicone. Its mouth opens and closes, kissing the ground. This is its final gesture before it dies. Inside its body, the two glands in its venom sac are releasing liquids that, alone, are not harmful.