Nurse Bees
Verhalten der Bienen
Nurse bees feed the brood. They are on duty roughly from the fourth to the tenth or twelfth day of life.
Nurse bees feed the brood. They are on duty roughly from the fourth to the tenth or twelfth day of life. The basis is the brood food from the hypopharyngeal glands in the head, which become active on the fourth day after emerging and deliver enough from the sixth day onward.
In the first three days, all larvae receive brood food. After that a switch is made: worker and drone larvae receive a mixture of pollen and honey, while only the future queen is fed brood food throughout. Part of the nurse bee population forms the retinue, follows the queen, and provisions her; she receives almost exclusively brood food.
The entire brood care thus depends on pollen. If it is missing, the hypopharyngeal glands develop insufficiently, the larvae are fed worse, and the queen receives less; in extreme cases her ovaries regress and she stops laying. Nothing of this is visible at the entrance, but it shows in the brood pattern: patchy instead of solid.