11.Honey bee behavior A Lecture By Mr. Allah Dad Khan Former DG Agriculture Extension KPK Province Peshawar

2. HONEY BEE
BEHAVIOR
A LECTURE
BY
MR.ALLAH
DAD KHAN

4. Honey Bee Vs Human Being
 Because they can
maintain a close
relationship with
humans, the
behavior of honey
bees has been well-
researched. Honey
bees live in well-
organized colonies
and do not require
hibernation

7. Honey Production
 They are best known
for their production of
honey, which they store
in wax combs inside
nests. Honey bees are
generally active during
spring, when they go in
search of plants from
which to collect pollen
and nectar. From these
two ingredients, they
create honey, which
humans have
harvested for hundreds
of years

9. Social Insect
 Honey bees are social
creatures and live within
colonies with a queen,
thousands of workers and a
few male drones. Workers
make these nests from wax,
which they secrete from their
abdominal glands. Within
each cell, young workers
place pollen and nectar as
food for developing larvae.
Male drones are ejected from
the nest to die during autumn,
after they have completed
their only task in life: to mate
with queens. The age of
honey bees also plays an
important role in determining
which individuals perform
various daily activities.

10. Honey Bees Are Adaptable
 Honey bees are very
adaptable. While honey
bees forage for food in
groups, a colony can
survive without foraging for
several years by living on
food reserves and huddling
in large, compacted
masses during winter
seasons. Honey bees
behave similarly in Africa,
Asia, Europe and other
parts of the world, though
certain species are known
to be more aggressive
than others

11. Honey Bees Behave
defensively
 Like some insects, honey
bees behave defensively
when intruders are near,
guarding the entrance to their
nests. However, honey bees
are able to sting only once.
Because stingers contain
barbs and are attached to the
worker’s intestines, they
detach from the stinging bee’s
body after attacking a victim.
While a honey bee will die
soon after transferring its
venom, pheromones secreted
during the attack will alarm
and stimulate other worker
bees to attack, as well.

12. Bee Hives in Wild
 In the wild, honey bee hives
are often located in the holes
of trees and on rock crevices.
The hive is made from wax
from the special abdominal
glands of worker honey bees.
Workers sweep up a few
flakes of wax from their
abdomens and chew these
flakes until the wax becomes
soft. Workers then mold the
wax and use it in making cells
to form the hive. Unlike other
bee species, honey bees do
not hibernate during cold
periods. Instead, they remain
inside the nests huddled
closely together, sharing body
heat and feeding on stored
food supplies.

13. Honey Bees Lives in Colonies
 Honey bees are social
creatures and live in colonies.
However, they do display
some aggressive behavior
within colonies: drones are
ejected from their nests
during cold weather, and a
queen will sometimes sting
other queens during mating
fights for dominance.
Although honey bees serve a
significant role in pollination
and ecology, measures
should be taken to ensure
that hives do not exist in
close proximity to your home,
due to the possibility of
getting stung. Always contact
a pest control professional
before attempting to address
an infestation

21. Guarding
 At some point during the worker honey bee's
life, she will take up the role of nest guard.
Guarding is necessary to protect the hive
against predation, parasitism and robbing.
Here we see a wasp, Vespula vulgaris,
attempting to enter the hive and the fierce
response of the guard bees

22. Age Levels of Bees Correlated
With Work Habits
 The honey bee is adaptable to many
environments. Honey bees that were native
only to Europe, Asia, and Africa have adapted
well to all but the polar regions of the world.
Part of this adaptability lies in the capacity of
the individual bee to “sense” what must be
done, then to perform the necessary duty.

23. Queen Attendants
 The queen bee is cleaned by
her courtiers, who meet her
every need, including the
disposal of her waste. At the
height of the season she lays
her own weight in eggs every
couple of hours, and so is
continuously surrounded by
young worker attendants,
who feed her royal jelly.
These attendants lick her
body, taking up the queen
odour (Queen Mandibular
Pheromone), which is then
spread throughout the colony
via continuous food
exchanges between the
workers.

24. Swarming
 Swarming is a natural method
of reproduction, where the old
queen leaves with a large
proportion of her offsping
from the original hive to form
a new colony. The swarm has
to hurry as the only provisions
for the journey are in the form
of full crops. Once the scout
bees, up to 300 workers,
have found an ideal site,it
doesn't take long for the rest
of the swarm (perhaps 20,000
bees) to fly off to the new
location. The time taken here
from the first bees take off
until the last bee leaves is
approximately 1 minute 40
seconds

25. The Drones

The time of day that drones fly in search of a mate
depends on many factors, such as the geographic
location, day length, and temperature. Drones
usually fly from the hive in large numbers between
11 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. Morning or early afternoon
flights may last 2 or 3 hours. Later flights are
shorter. When out of the hive, drones congregate
in “mating areas,” which may serve to attract
virgin queens. These areas usually are less than
100 feet from the ground and seem to be
associated with land terrain.

26. The Queen

The virgin queen becomes sexually mature
about 5 days after emergence. She is
relatively quiet in the morning and most active
in the afternoon. She may begin her mating
flights 5 or 6 days after emergence and go on
a number of flights over several days. Mating
with 8 to 12 drones will stock her spermatheca
with 6 million to 7 million sperm. She will begin
to lay eggs in 2 to 5 days and may continue for
years

27. Control of Foraging
 A major crop pollination goal is to control
foraging bees and get them to more effectively
visit and pollinate crops; conversely, we would
like to repel them from areas where there is
danger from insecticides or where they
endanger people. Work with other insects –
both social and nonsocial – indicates that this
might be accomplished some day by chemical
and physical means

28. The Performance of Colonies
 Genetically, we found that some bees produce
more honey than others, but we do not know
why. The individual bee may collect more
because of its own genetic inheritance. The
colony may store more honey because of the
queen’s inherited ability to lay more eggs,
resulting in a greater total population of bees
in the hive, or because the bees are inherently
longer lived

29. Cause of Stinging Bees or
Temper
 The term “temper” of bees refers to their
inclination to sting. Many factors influence the
temper of bees, and it is a difficult subject to
study. Environment of the hive and
manipulation by an individual beekeeper
certainly influence temper responses of bees.
Temper is probably influenced tremendously
by the genetics or inheritance of the bee as
well as the environment

30. Known Pheromone Activity
 Chemicals that bees and other insects
produce that influence, or direct, behavior of
other bees are broadly called pheromones. In
honey bees these chemicals are produced by
the queen, workers, and probably drone

31. Flight Behavior
 When several thousand bees and a queen are
placed in new surroundings – which happens
when the swarm enters its new domicile or a
package of bees is installed, or a colony is
moved to a new location – normal flight of
some workers from the entrance may occur
within minutes. If flowering plants are
available, bees may be returning to the hive
with pollen within an hour

32. Colony Morale
 “Colony morale” generally refers to the well-being of
the colony. If the morale is good, the bees are doing
what is desired of them, including increasing the
colony population, making honey, and pollinating
flowers. Many factors affect colony morale. For
example, if the queen is removed from a colony during
a honey flow, the daily weight gains immediately
decrease, although the bee population for the next 3
weeks is unaltered. Also, when a colony is preparing
to swarm, the bees practically stop gathering pollen
and nectar. Improper manipulations or external
environment also affects colony morale. A colony has
good morale when the maximum number of bees are
making the maximum number of flights to gather
nectar and pollen.

33. Housecleaning
 Certain waste material accumulates in a
normal colony. Adult bees and immature forms
may die. Wax scales, cappings from the cells
of emerging bees, particles of pollen, and
crystallized bits of honey drop to the floor of
the hive. Intruders, such as wax moths, bees
from other colonies, and predators, are killed
and fall to the floor. Worker bees remove this
debris from the hiv