Hive Design (Kastenwesen)
Lexikon
There are three castes in a bee colony: the queen as the only fully reproductive female, the workers as thousands of non-reproductive females, and the drones as several hundred males in spring and summer.
There are three castes in a bee colony: the queen as the only fully reproductive female, the workers as thousands of non-reproductive females, and the drones as several hundred males in spring and summer.
Whether a fertilized egg becomes a queen or a worker is not laid down in the genetic makeup, but decided by the shape of the cell and above all by feeding. The queen larva receives royal jelly throughout the entire feeding period, the worker larva receives brood food only for the first few days and thereafter mainly pollen and honey. Worker brood food contains markedly less mandibular gland secretion than royal jelly.
The development times from egg to emergence differ considerably: queen 16 days, worker 21 days, drone 24 days. These figures set the pace for almost all beekeeping interventions, from breaking out queen cells to checking for a laying young queen.
The castes also differ physically. Wax glands, the Nasonov gland, and the collecting apparatus on the third pair of legs are found only in the worker. Her proboscis is long, while that of the queen and drone is short. The drone has the largest eyes and by far the most sensory plates on the antennae, which fits his task of finding the queen in flight.