House Bee
Lexikon
As a house bee, one refers to a worker in the first phase of her adult life, roughly from the first to the twentieth day of life.
As a house bee, one refers to a worker in the first phase of her adult life, roughly from the first to the twentieth day of life. During this time she rarely leaves the hive and takes on various tasks inside one after another: she cleans freshly vacated cells, feeds the brood and the queen with brood food as a nurse bee, builds new combs with wax as a builder bee, stores nectar and pollen, and guards the entrance toward the end of this phase.
Which task a house bee is currently performing is closely tied to the development of her internal glands. Hypopharyngeal glands, wax glands and the venom gland become active one after another and then regress again, so that the bee's daily routine changes automatically with age. This principle of age-based division of labor is not rigid, however: if the colony lacks nurse bees, for example, older house bees can reactivate their hypopharyngeal glands and take up nursing duties again.
This knowledge is important for beekeeping practice when colonies are united, nucleus colonies are formed, or combs with open brood are added. Such interventions only work if enough young house bees are present in the right physiological state, otherwise there is a lack of capacity to care for the brood. A common misconception is wanting to determine a bee's age purely from external appearance; in reality, her task can only be read from her behavior in the colony.