How bees reproduce: types of artificial and natural reproduction

2024 Author: Howard Calhoun | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 10:16

Working with bees is surprisingly interesting and challenging. To successfully engage in it, you need to have vast experience, to understand hundreds of various nuances. One of the first questions that many beginner beekeepers ask is: "How do bees reproduce?". This is a really important question - knowing the answer to it, you can turn one single colony into 4-6 he althy swarms in one season, each of which will easily survive the winter, and in the spring will be able to work productively, producing hundreds of kilograms of natural honey.

Types of breeding bees

To begin with, two methods of reproduction should be distinguished. The first one is brood. It is aimed only at increasing the number of bees within the same family. Thanks to this, the family becomes stronger, collects more nectar, and is able to survive the coldest winter with minimal losses. The second is swarming. Thanks to him, the number of bees in one family is significantly reduced, but the number of families increases. Over time, thanks to the brood, the strength of the family is restored.

We should also highlight a few artificialmethods of reproduction - layering, division and plaque on the uterus. They are similar to swarming, however, they do not occur at the bee's will, but when the beekeeper needs it. Of course, learning more about each of them will be very useful for a beginner beekeeper who is interested in how bees reproduce.

Brood

Everything is quite simple here - the mechanism of the process itself is quite similar to reproduction in most animals, as well as people. At least outwardly.

The queen bee spends most of her life in the hive. Nurse bees carefully take care of her, feed her with royal jelly, take eggs, massage her sides well, and so on. As a result of such care and increased nutrition, the uterus becomes fat, loses its ability to fly. But it lays eggs in huge numbers - several thousand a day. And for this, she does not even need to mate - at this stage, the bees reproduce by parthenogenesis, that is, without the participation of males (drones).

Nanny bees take the eggs, take them to special honeycombs, where the egg turns into a larva, then into a chrysalis, from which a new worker bee emerges. Thanks to this, the reproduction of workers goes quickly and smoothly.

However, parthenogenesis in bees (asexual reproduction) is only suitable for cases where asexual worker bees are needed. But in some cases, the uterus leaves the familiar world of the hive - this is preceded by serious preparation, and in general this process is very interesting. Therefore, we will tell you more about it.

Quick departure

Under certain conditions (we will talk about them a little later), the queen leaves the hive forfertilization by drones. This is necessary in order to lay eggs from which other queens and drones will hatch. Parthenogenesis cannot be dispensed with here. What is the reproduction of bees in this case? Everything is quite interesting.

A few days before departure, the uterus does not lay eggs, stops eating royal jelly, switching to honey. As a result, she loses weight, gains the ability to fly. This is what she does - flying out of the hive, the uterus rises to a great height, where it meets with drones. Moreover, it can be both drones from her hive, and from strangers. This ensures blood renewal, minor mutations in offspring, aimed at improving the qualities of bees, adapting to certain environmental conditions.

In flight, the queen is fertilized by drones and, after returning to the hive, is ready to lay eggs, from which not sexless worker bees will emerge, but new drones and a queen.

What is swarming

Immediately after returning to the hive, the queen lays her eggs in the queen cells - not worker bees will come out of here, but new queens. Their number can reach 8 and even 10 at a time.

After 7-10 days, the first fully formed queen hatches from the mother liquor. A large number of worker bees gather around it, as well as drones. Together they fly out of the hive - a swarm is created, well known to experienced beekeepers.

It is almost impossible to take a photo of how bees breed. But capturing the moment of swarming is a very interesting, albeit rather dangerous experience. At this time, the bees are quite aggressive, they canattack anyone who comes close to them at a dangerous distance.

Several hours the swarm is in close proximity to the hive. It can hang from a nearby tree or from the outer wall of the hive. This moment is the best opportunity for the beekeeper to catch the swarm, not to let it go and disappear somewhere in the forest or other suitable place. Special traps are used for catching.

All this time, scout bees are looking for a suitable place to move in. When it is found, the swarm is removed from the place and flies there. It is almost impossible to catch them at this time - the flight takes place at a height of about three meters.

Since there are several queen cells in the hive, there can be several swarms, and each subsequent one will be weaker than the previous one, because the remaining bees in the hive are divided approximately equally. When a native colony becomes very weak, the queen destroys the unhatched queens to stop division - otherwise the hive will die, and a very weak swarm will not have a chance to survive.

Many beekeepers are interested in whether young, hatched bees breed or not. The answer here is unequivocal: of course, yes. The queen lays eggs, and when the new family becomes strong enough, the division will repeat.

Reasons for swarm release

Swarming usually happens when the family gets too big. The number of worker bees increases to such a limit that idler bees appear. They sit all day long in suitable places, not taking part in the social life of the hive - forthey just don't have the right places.

In addition, this process can be provoked by insufficiently comfortable living conditions - low-quality hive, draft, overheating or tightness.

Usually, during swarming, half of the hive comes out, and 2/3 of the swarm consists of young, strong bees. But the old family has all the brood and accumulated honey. True, before departure, the bees carefully gorge themselves on honey from old stocks in order to easily survive a long flight and bad weather.

Use layering

Alas, the natural division of the family, or swarming, is a rather complicated, unpredictable process. It is very difficult to guess in advance exactly when this will happen, although an experienced beekeeper can always determine in a few days that the swarm will soon come out - the tone of the hive's buzz changes. You can also guess about the imminent release of the swarm by noticing several maturing queen cells.

But still, artificial methods of division are gaining more popularity. Using layering is one of them.

The process is as simple as possible and even a novice beekeeper can do it.

Two or three frames with printed brood are transferred to the new hive from the old, fairly strong, large one. Moreover, they are transferred along with the nurse bees sitting on it.

You also need to transfer two honey frames. Then one of the queen cells is transferred to the hive - preferably the largest, ripened. The queen will emerge from it and immediately begin the work of laying eggs. In this case, the swarm will definitely not die, notlost, not weakened. After all, he will immediately move to a new place. Yes, and in the old family there will be work - to restore stocks of honey and honeycomb.

How division works

Quite similar to the use of layering, another way of breeding bees is division. At the same time, the second one is placed as close as possible to the hive, as similar as possible - in shape, size, color. About half of all worker bees are transferred here, as well as 50% of the frames with honey and brood. The freed space is complemented by waxed frames.

Due to the fact that both hives are similar, stand side by side and local bees have the same smell, they are distributed as evenly as possible. A few days later, at night, closing the notch, you can move the new hive to a more convenient place - the bees have already settled down in it and will not leave their homes.

What is this - a plaque on the uterus?

The last artificial breeding method for bees is a raid on the uterus. It is not much different from the ones listed above and is also very simple.

At the same time, 4 frames with brood are installed in the new hive, as well as nurse bees watching it. It is desirable that the brood have a different age. Honeycombs and foundation are installed on the sides.

The old queen is also moved here (provided that there are mature queen cells created 6-7 days ago in the old hive).

The old hive is moved to another place, and the new one is placed on the old one. Then some of the bees will return to the old queen, while the rest will take care of the new one.

Of course, there will be no flying bees in the new hive at first. But there is enough honey, new ones come out of the broodbees, and the uterus, with the support of nannies, works hard, laying as many eggs as possible to restore the strength of the hive. Yes, and a few arriving bees will provide good support.

The operation should be performed only in good weather and with a favorable forecast. There will be few young flying bees, therefore, large losses cannot be allowed at the very first departures from the hive. This will greatly weaken the family and may even destroy it. You also need to make sure that the young family has enough honey, and the water source is located as close as possible.

Conclusion

This concludes our article. In it, we tried to tell how bees breed - briefly, but with all the important features. We hope this information will be useful to you when working on a new apiary.