Division of Labor by Age
Verhalten der Bienen
A worker changes tasks over the course of her life.
A worker changes tasks over the course of her life. In the first days after emerging she cleans cells and removes cocoon remnants and larval feces so that the queen can lay in them again. From the fourth day she tends brood: the hypopharyngeal glands become active on the fourth day and produce enough brood food from the sixth day onward. She remains a nurse bee until about the tenth or twelfth day.
From the eleventh day the wax glands switch on and she becomes a builder bee. Around the eleventh or twelfth day she leaves the brood nest more often, takes over incoming nectar, prepares the honey for storage, and manages the stores. Between the 18th and 21st day, guard duty at the entrance is added, after which she flies as a forager.
This sequence is a framework, not a timetable. The bee institutes explicitly point out that the division of labor is not strict: during a strong nectar flow, younger workers become foragers early, and regressed hypopharyngeal glands can become active again when needed. Only the end is fixed: the last phase in a worker's life is always that of a forager. For the apiary this means: a colony compensates for losses in one age group, but only up to a certain point. Anyone who removes many foragers, for example when making a split, interferes with this structure. A summer bee lives around five to six weeks, a winter bee seven to eight months.