Was watching the hive this morning and I started wondering about how the bees end up doing the jobs they do. Some of them were bringing in pollen, but most were not - I assume they were carrying nectar. I know there are house bees who do the cleaning and fixing, nurse bees who look after the larvae, and field bees who go out hunting. Do some of them look specifically for pollen and others for nectar? Are these jobs flexible? Can they switch responsibilities depending on what there is to do? Just wondering, really.
I know, I can turn a bunch into gaurds, like right now. :grin:
Nyleve,
As far as the field bees jobs, it is what the house bees ask for that they end up collecting. If it is too hot they will call for water. If you have a pollen trap on the hive preventing much of it from getting into the hive, you will end up with a lot of bees trying to bring in pollen. When a good flow is on they will bug the field bees for nectar. If they need to do repairs, they will bug the field bees for propolis.
Jim
They get recruited. Other feedback mechanisms are that there are receiver bees. If the receiver bees refuse what they came back with then they get recruited to do something else. So if the hive needs more water the receiver bees start refusing nectar. The bees with the nectar wonder around trying to get someone to unload them and they get shaken by a bee demanding they watch their recruitment dance. The recruiter shares some of the water that she is trying to recruit for. The nectar gatherer dumps their load in a cell and goes off to find the water. When the bee that is now a water carrier comes back sometime in the future and no one will unload her water, she wanders around until she gets recruited to forage for pollen, or nectar, or propolis...
Great question and great answers - you learn something new every day! Thanks!
That is amazing! Thanks for that - I'm even more in awe than I was before.
Now you know why beekeeping is so addictive.
Jim