Social Life of Bees

Social Life of Bees
social behavior
Honey bees as a group appear to have their centre of origin in South and South East Asia (including thePhilippines)

a colony generally contains one queen bee, a fertile female; seasonally up to a few thousand drone bees or fertile males;[9] and a large seasonally variable population of sterile female worker bees
Eggs are laid singly in a cell in a wax honeycomb, produced and shaped by the worker bees.
Young worker bees clean the hive and feed the larvae.
Worker bees cooperate to find food through many different chemicals and odours and use a pattern of "dancing” to communicate information regarding resources with each other; this dance varies from species to species. If the resources are very close to the hive, they may also exhibit a less specific dance commonly known as the "Round Dance".

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.

In cold climates honey bees stop flying when the temperature drops below about 10 °C (50 °F) and crowd into the central area of the hive to form a "winter cluster". The worker bees huddle around the queen bee at the center of the cluster, shivering in order to keep the center between 27 °C(81 °F) at the start of winter (during the broodless period) and 34 °C (93 °F) once the queen resumes laying. The worker bees rotate through the cluster from the outside to the inside so that no bee gets too cold. The outside edges of the cluster stay at about 8–9 °C (46–48 °F). The colder the weather is outside, the more compact the cluster becomes. During winter, they consume their stored honey to produce body heat. The amount of honey consumed during the winter is a function of winter length and severity but ranges in temperate climates from 30 to 100 lbs.[10]