How long does a bee live, and what determines the duration of its life

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How long does a bee live, and what determines the duration of its life
How long does a bee live, and what determines the duration of its life

Video: How long does a bee live, and what determines the duration of its life

Video: How long does a bee live, and what determines the duration of its life
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How long does a bee live
How long does a bee live

Bees live in large families - swarms, each in its own hive. In the family, 3 types of peculiar insects are distinguished: bee, drone and uterus. The question arises: "How long does a bee live?" There will be no single answer, you need to first clarify which one. Matriarchy reigns in the bee world. And this means that the leading role belongs to female individuals - worker bees and the uterus. They form the biological basis of the family, as they are able to build a nest, collect food and multiply. The males are drones. They are unable to work. Their purpose is the fertilization of the uterus, which occurs in the air and is very rare. There is only one queen in the hive, and there are thousands of drones. But only a few of them mate with the uterus. The sperm from 7-10 drones obtained in one nuptial flight can last for 2-3 years.

How many years do bees live
How many years do bees live

How many years do bees live

Each bee in the swarm system performs its specific functions and is unable to live separately, outside the bee society. Let's start with the head of the swarm - the queen bee. It is so arranged by nature that she is the only full-fledged female with developedgenitals, progenitor of all members of the bee family: working insects, drones, young queens. As the poet said: "Forty thousand daughters live with her." The number of bees in the hive depends on its egg production. Simple addiction: more eggs, more bees, more honey. How long does a queen bee live? Only her age is measured in years and can be 5-6 years. But only especially valuable specimens survive to this age, from which they wish to receive numerous offspring. As the queens age, they lay fewer and fewer eggs, among which there are more and more unfertilized ones, and drones are obtained from them. Most often, after 2 years, the uterus is replaced with a young one.

How long does a drone bee live

It depends on how lucky the individual insect is. Drones hatch in late spring. There are several thousand of them in a hive. Drones reach sexual maturity by two weeks of age. Immediately after insemination of the uterus, the drone dies. Many of them also die in the mating flight. At the end of the honey harvest, the worker bees who survived by the fall are driven out of the hive to hunger and cold: they need too much food. But sometimes drones can still be left for the winter in those families where there is no uterus or it is infertile. Bees are able to determine the inferiority of the producer and the need for drones. A sufficient number of drones in the hive is needed in order to surely fertilize the queen. So it turns out that some drones live for 2 weeks (this can happen), others - from spring to autumn cold, others can live almost a year.

How long does a worker bee live
How long does a worker bee live

How long does a worker bee live

To answer this question, you need to know the birth time of the worker bee when it left the cell. Spring bees that appear after wintering can live 35 days. June bees live for 30 days. And those bred during the main honey collection - 28, at most 30. How long does an autumn bee, say, September, live? Long-lived bees appear in autumn. They need to live until spring, until the new honey season. And this in the conditions of Siberia, for example, can be half a year or a little more. And this is not the limit. In colonies without brood, worker bees live up to a year.

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