Page 66 - The Miracle of the Honeybee

64 THE MIRACLE OF THE HONEYBEE

Egg

Fertilized Unfertilized From the eggs
laid by the
queen, different
types of bee
Light Heavy feeding emerge, de-
feeding + Royal Jelly pending on the
modes of fertil-
ization and
feeding.

Worker
Drone
Queen

Differences between the Queen and the Other Bees
The queen differs in terms of her general structure and appearance. For

example, although the workers are female like the queen, their ovaries are
not developed—in other words, all worker bees are sterile. The queen’s
head and thorax are little larger than those of the workers. And unlike the
worker bees, the queen’s mandible is not suited to making wax cells. The
queen bee’s hind legs also lack the workers’ hard hairs which fringe the
pollen baskets. Most important of all, although the queen hatches from ex-

actly the same sort of egg as the workers, she lives for from 4 to 5 years (ex-
cept for those emerging in winter, who live for a few months), rather than
just 5 to 6 weeks.
These are just a few of the general differences between the queen and
the workers, which are set out in greater detail on the next page.