Paragraph on “How do bees run their hive?” complete paragraph for Class 9, Class 10, Class 11 and Class 12

How do bees run their hive?

A bee’s life is very organised. Each bee —queen, drone and worker — has a special role,  and it is the queen and worker bees who decide how many drones there should be in 1 the hive.

All the worker bees are sterile females and the drones are male. There are about 6o,000 bees in the hive and only about 1,000 of these are drones. This is an incredible difference in the numbers between the sexes. How does it happen ?

The queen bee only mates once in her life. She stores the male’s sperms in her body and regulates their release. The queen starts laying eggs in early spring and continues until late autumn. Sometimes, she lays as many as 1,5oo eggs a day. This is about one egg per minute. By controlling the sperms in her body, the queen can lay fertilised and unfertilised eggs. The fertilised eggs develop into females, the unfertilised eggs into males.

The unfertilised eggs are laid in special cells, slightly larger than the rest. The fascinating thing is that while the queen can choose which eggs she wants to fertilise, the workers can also influence her decision. The workers build the cells, and, according to the needs of the hive, they decide how many special cells to build.