HIVE
The beehive has its magical structure,
each bee does its work. This is how our team is made up
at Antonieta Miel Cruda.
What does the queen bee do?
Sovereign of the hive, the queen 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 for the reproduction and balance of the colony. She feeds exclusively on royal jelly, which grants her a surprising longevity, living up to 5 years, while worker bees barely live about 45 to 50 days.
Her legs are longer, and she only uses her stinger against other queens. The queen has the ability to control the sex of her offspring: if she lays a fertilized egg in a cell, a worker will be born. If she deposits it in a cell called a royal cell, a queen will be born.
For a drone to be born, the egg must be unfertilized and in a larger cell than that of worker bees. When the queen ages, she is no longer efficient, and the worker bees take action. They build royal 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 worker bees in the hive?
The colony is home to more than 10,000 of these bees, which live from 6 weeks to 6 months.
They collect nectar and pollinate flowers, and make food for the queen bee and her young (royal jelly).
Worker bees are artists who build honeycomb panels made of hexagonal prismatic cells with wax. They clean and protect the hive.
What is the drones' mission?
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 stinger and their wings are wider. Larvae from fertilized eggs become females. Unfertilized eggs become 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.
Generally, in the accounts of the most advanced societies throughout history, traces of knowledge about bees and the rational exploitation of honey and wax have been found.
For example, 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 never ceased.
Modern or movable-frame beekeeping began with the creation of frames with movable combs, so as not to destroy them when harvesting honey, reaching 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 a Wedding Dance?
Mating flights are a type of mating that takes place in the air, in mid-flight, at an approximate altitude of 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 more than 12 km from the hive to meet. Mating occurs in places that remain constant across generations. This ensures that related species do not interbreed, preventing inbreeding. Before copulation, up to 100 drones follow her like the tail of a comet.
The drone pursues the queen and mounts her in flight from behind, extracts the copulatory organ with a snap, and inserts it, pumping all its blood. It then dies and falls to the ground. The queen will undertake flights with other drones until she has stored enough sperm in the spermatheca.
Once mating is successfully completed, the queen's ovaries fully mature, and she begins laying eggs.
QUEEN ZANG WEDDING DANCE
