Why Do Bees Buzz?: Fascinating Answers to Questions about Bees

4. Bee Love

FOUR Bee Love Question 1: How does a bee attract a mate? Answer: Queen honey bees give off pheromones that attract males (drones) when they are ready to embark on their mating flights (see this chapter, question 3: How do bees mate?). Since the sole task of drones is to mate with virgin queen bees, it is unsurprising that drones have receptors on their antennae that are specially attuned to detect queen pheromone. When a virgin queen is ready to mate, she makes several flights to an area where drones from local colonies congregate and wait for a queen with whom they can mate. When the drones become aware of her presence, they compete to mate with her and some of the strongest and most agile succeed. In solitary species, the males normally emerge before the females , and they may wait for a female to emerge at the nest site or near a flower and then mate with her there. Among bumblebees and some solitary species, the male is responsible for attracting a mate, and he marks a series of plant stems with pheromones that he secretes from glands on his mandibles (jaws). In some species, males are territorial and patrol and guard a certain route, marking it with pheromones. Sometimes other males are attracted as well, and when a receptive female is drawn to the territory, the male or the group of males attempts to mate with her, and in some cases a large mass of drones surrounding the female will fall to the ground in the midst of trying to mate. R5192.indb 73 R5192.indb 73 11/30/09 3:02:36 PM 11/30/09 3:02:36 PM 74 WHY DO BEES BUZZ? Question 2: Do all bees mate? Answer: Among female honey bees, it is almost always only the queen that mates. She mates multiple times shortly after she emerges from the pupal stage, storing up enough sperm to keep laying fertilized eggs for the rest of her life. The queen releases a pheromone that suppresses the development of the reproductive systems of the female worker bees. This chemical keeps the workers from becoming reproductively viable, and the queen’s eggs and larvae reinforce her message with chemicals that they pass along to the attending workers, signaling that the queen is providing the colony with an adequate supply of new workers. If the queen is removed or if her pheromone level drops, worker eggs can develop, although, because workers are equipped with barbed stings, they cannot mate. The only role of a drone is to mate with a virgin queen when she goes out on her brief mating flights. Drones do not mate with the queen of their own colony—that queen is the drone’s mother. A virgin queen may mate with as many as twenty drones, but the rest of the drones will die without mating. If a drone has not successfully mated after a week or so, the workers will withhold food or he will be driven out of the hive and killed. The reality is that most drones die without ever mating (see chapter 1, question 10: What is the role of the drones?). Question 3: How do bees mate? Answer: A virgin honey bee queen mates early in her life, having sex “on the fly” with as many as twenty drones over a period of a few days, and then she never mates again. She produces eggs throughout her life in well-developed ovaries that fill up most of her abdomen, and she can produce hundreds of thousands of offspring in her lifetime from the sperm she stores in those few days. A few days after the young honey bee queen has emerged from her pupal case, she flies to a so-called drone congregation area, where a large number of fertile males from nearby coloR5192 .indb 74 R5192.indb 74 11/30/09 3:02:36 PM 11/30/09 3:02:36 PM BEE LOVE 75 nies are assembled, waiting to take advantage of their once-in-alifetime opportunity to pass on their genes to any virgin queen that comes along. The drones fly around at a height of twenty or thirty feet above the ground, and they locate a receptive queen by sensing her pheromones and by using all five of their eyes. If they are vigorous enough to catch up with a queen...