The House of Putjukan --“Wild Beehive”
By Menelo CH, 2011
These wild bees were taken from a a Chico (Fruit bearing tree) here in Bohol, Philippines. These wild bees locally known as putyukan or putjukan are a subset of bees in the genus Apis. This species collects and stores honey and had its ability of perennial construction, colonial nests out of wax (Engel, 1999).
Life Cycle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apini)
As in a few other types of eusocial bees, a colony generally contains one queen bee, a fertile female; seasonally up to a few thousand drone bees or fertile males;and a large seasonally variable population of sterile female worker bees. Details vary among the different species of honey bees, but common features include:
1. Eggs are laid singly in a cell in a wax honeycomb, produced and shaped by the worker bees. Using her spermatheca, the queen actually can choose to fertilize the egg she is laying, usually depending on what cell she is laying in. Drones develop from unfertilized eggs and are haploid, while females (queens and worker bees) develop from fertilized eggs and are diploid. Larvae are initially fed with royal jelly produced by worker bees, later switching to honey and pollen. The exception is a larva fed solely on royal jelly, which will develop into a queen bee. The larva undergoes several moltings before spinning a cocoon within the cell, and pupating.
2. Young worker bees clean the hive and feed the larvae. When their royal jelly producing glands begin to atrophy, they begin building comb cells. They progress to other within-colony tasks as they become older, such as receiving nectar and pollen from foragers, and guarding the hive. Later still, a worker takes her first orientation flights and finally leaves the hive and typically spends the remainder o
3. Worker bees cooperate to find food and use a pattern of "dancing" (known as the bee dance or waggle dance) to communicate information regarding resources with each other; this dance varies from species to species, but all living species of Apis exhibit some form of the behavior. If the resources are very close to the hive, they may also exhibit a less specific dance commonly known as the "Round Dance".
4. 4. Honey bees also perform tremble dances which recruit receiver bees to collect nectar from returning foragers.
5. Virgin queens go on mating flights away from their home colony, and mate with multiple drones before returning. The drones die in the act of mating.
6. Colonies are established not by solitary queens, as in most bees, but by groups known as "swarms", which consist of a mated queen and a large contingent of worker bees. This group moves en masse to a nest site that has been scouted by worker bees beforehand. Once they arrive, they immediately construct a new wax comb and begin to raise new worker brood. This type of nest founding is not seen in any other living bee genus, though there are several groups of Vespid wasps which also found new nests via swarming (sometimes including multiple queens). Also, stingless bees will start new nests with large numbers of worker bees, but the nest is constructed before a queen is escorted to the site, and this worker force is not a true "swarm".
The life cycle of a honeybee exists in three distinct independent stages. After hatching from egg, the bee exists initial as a larval form. Soon after the larval form, the secondary stage as pupae is reached. Finally the pupae develop into the adult bee. The adult bee may take the form of a worker, a drone, or a queen bee. It is common for worker bees to live up to nine days if their main task in life is heavy foraging. Conversely, workers that do menial tasks in the hive will survive for around three weeks. Loosing a forager from time to time does not have a crucial impact on the overall well being of the hive. A strong beehive has between ten and twenty thousand foragers at any given time. The queen also possesses the ability to replace any lost bees by laying up to 2,000 eggs a day. Developing brood, depending on the season and race of bee, can fill up to a full third of the hive (eskills.net.ph)
By . Menelo CH, Sept. 2011
References:
Engel, M., 1999. "The taxonomy of recent and fossil honey bees (Hymenoptera: Apidae: Apis)". Journal of Hymenoptera Research 8: 192pp.
Life Cycle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apini)
http://eskills.net.ph/Library%20of%20Learning%20Elements/Inwent%20Courses/teilnehmer/Flordeliza%27s%20elp%20folder/honeybees_description.html
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