Colony Organisation, Social Behaviour and Life Cycle of the Honey Bee
Colony organisation questions test the division of labour between queen, workers and drones and the timing of brood development.
Castes and their roles
A colony has one queen, thousands of workers and a few hundred drones. The queen is a diploid female; she lays eggs and produces queen mandibular pheromone that suppresses worker ovaries. Workers are sterile females and change tasks with age: nurse, comb builder, food handler, guard and forager. Drones are haploid males from unfertilised eggs; their only colony role is mating.
Brood development
Egg: 3 days in all castes. Larva: about 5 days for queen, 5-6 for worker, 7 for drone. Pupa: about 7-8 days queen, 12-13 worker, 14 drone. Total: queen 15-16 days, worker 21 days in A. mellifera (18-20 in A. cerana), drone about 24 days. Queen cells are vertical; worker and drone cells are horizontal.
Social behaviour
Trophallaxis spreads food and pheromone. The round dance signals nearby food; the waggle dance gives direction and distance. Swarming is colony reproduction; absconding is whole-colony desertion, common in A. cerana under dearth or disturbance.
Worked example
An egg is laid on 1 March in an A. mellifera worker cell. Reasoning: add 3 days egg + 6 days larva + 12 days pupa = 21 days, so the adult worker emerges about 22 March.
Traps
Do not say drones come from fertilised eggs. Do not give the queen a 21-day development period. In a queenless colony, workers may lay unfertilised eggs that become drones, but they cannot produce a new queen without a larva or egg of the right age.