Page 70 - The Miracle of the Honeybee
P. 70

68                  THE MIRACLE OF THE HONEYBEE


                                            queen takes place on the wing. Following
                                            fertilization, the male generally dies as
                                            the queen bee flies back to the hive.
                                               It has been established that the queen
                                            makes from three to 12 flights during her
                                            mating period, mating with a different
                                            drone each time. Since the sperm from
                                            one male is insufficient to fill her sper-
                                            matheca, she receives sperm from several
                                                  51
                                            males. Following each fertilization, the
                                            sperm from all the males is stored to-
                                            gether. The queen will use this sperm ob-
           Male bees (drones) waiting for the  tained from the mating flights during her
           queen to leave on the mating flight                   52
                                            life span of 4 to 5 years. There is an aver-
              age of 6 million spermatozoa in the spermatheca of a mated queen. 53
                 Unlike the reproductive cells in many creatures, the male bees’ sperm
              can be preserved for years in the queen’s body without decaying or losing
              their viability. This is yet another sign of flawless creation in the body of
              the bee.
                 Yet the sperm collected in her body do not carry out the fertilization
              themselves. Every stage of the fertilization of the egg is under the queen’s
              control. She regulates the fertilization by depositing as much sperm as she
              desires from the spermatheca. (This most miraculous process will be ex-
              amined in greater detail later in this book.)


                 A Million Eggs a Year
                 Some 2 to 3 days after the mating process is finished, the queen begins
              to lay her eggs one by one, in a series of cells specially prepared by the
              worker bees. She continues the process, non-stop, each year from early
              spring to mid-autumn, until the end of her life.
                 During the laying period, a queen lays from 1,500 to 2,000 eggs a day. 54
                                                                        55
              When necessary, she can increase that figure to as high as 3,000. Based on
   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75