The Worker Bee- A Female Powerhouse!

She flits from flower to flower, oblivious of my presence, tongue deep into the heart of the flower.  Seeing her tiny body, wings flapping, here and there, one might be fooled to think her movements are aimless.  You would be wrong! 

This little being has a big mission and is a very valuable piece of our world.  She belongs to a colony of honeybees and is referred to as a worker bee.   Worker bees are the smallest and most numerous of the bees, constituting over 98% of the colony’s population.  One colony, may have as many as 50000 – 80000 workers within its hive

The little powerhouse dedicates all her life in service for her hive, possessing organs necessary for carrying out the many duties essential to the wellbeing of the colony. Every part of her body has an important purpose.  She has a longer tongue than the queen and drones to enable her to suck the nectar from flowers, A large honey stomach to carry the nectar from the field to the hive and pollen baskets on her third pair of legs to transport the pollen to the hive.  Glands in her head produce royal jelly as food for the larvae and the glands in her thorax secrete enzymes necessary for ripening honey.  Four sets of wax glands, situated inside the last four segments of her abdomen, produce wax for comb construction. To defend herself, she has well-developed sting which is used to defend the colony.  Unlike the queen, she never mates and therefore cannot produce fertilized eggs.  However, she can lay unfertilized eggs which produce drones.

All worker bees are female.  They live for about 4-6 weeks and do all the work in the hive. They work so hard that they work themselves to death!  A worker bee performs several roles during her short life.  Each role defined depending on her age.  During the first three weeks of her adult life, she will perform duties of a house bee.   Her duties as a house bee are many.  They include cleaning, feeding the brood, caring for the queen, comb building, ventilating the hive, store work, guard duty and making orientation flights. 

The remainder of her life as a field bee, will thereafter be dedicated to field work.  This work is the most dangerous and arguably the most important. It is only done by older bees who are closer to death. As a field bee or forager, she will fly upwards of 2 kilometres (1.3 miles) to collect nectar and pollen, water, and act as scout.  Scouts locate food sources or new places to build a nest.  This information is passed on to other bees or queen by a series of dance-like movements called the Waggle Dance.

As the worker bee approaches her fourth week of nonstop work, she will sense her end of days and remove herself from the hive, so as not to become a burden. If she dies in the hive, her fellow bees will have to remove her corpse.

Thus, is the life of a female bee, compulsively working from the day she’s born until the day she dies. It’s a life of nonstop work, but honeybees, as a result, are some of the most successful collaborators found in nature.