Honey Bee - AA

The Honey Bee (Apis Mellifera)

Honey Bees are normally about 3/4 of an inch long.Most worker bees are female, but some are male, called "drones". Workers are slightly smaller than drones.Honey Bees live in a nest called a "hive". A single hive can have up to 80,000 bees, mostly workers and is usually located in the hollow of a tree. The hive is ruled over by the queen bee who is the largest bee in the hive and is the only female to mate. Males only purpose is to mate with the queen then they die. The workers do all of the work inside and outside of the hive. Honey Bees are also ectotherms.

' Ectotherm? '

An ectotherm is an organism that does not fully control body temperature by physiological means. Its body temperature changes with environmental temperature. Examples of ectotherms include reptiles, amphibians, fish and insects. Ectotherms cannot increase their metabolic rate to warm themselves up, unlike mammals, so they rely on heat from the environment. They have a range of behavioural adaptations to increase or decrease absorption of of heat from the environment.

 The Honey Bee's adaptations 

When the temperature drops below 10 degrees celsius honey bees stop flying and crowd into the central area of the hive to form a "winter cluster" as they lose their ability to fly. The worker bees huddle around the queen bee, who is in the centre of the cluster, shivering to keep the centre at about 27 and 34 degrees celsius. The worker bees rotate throughout the cluster to from the outside to the inside to make sure that no bee gets too cold. The colder the weather outside the more compact the cluster becomes. They also consume their stored honey to produce body heat during the winter.