Читать книгу Bees Make the Best Pets - Jack Mingo - Страница 10

There are only two categories of bees that have the same job their entire life, and for both of them, that job is reproduction.

The Queen: The queen lays eggs. She's the only one that does, and she does it nearly constantly during honey season—from 1,000 to 1,500 eggs a day. She's not really the leader of the hive; more like its ovaries. Still, she's very important to the continuing existence of the hive so she is well protected, pretty much to the point of house arrest. When she's doing well, she communicates it through cues of scent and behavior; if she's not doing well, that news gets quickly disseminated through the hive as well. The workers show who's really boss at that time: They immediately begin planning to depose her, creating special, extra large queen cells that look like peanuts sticking out from the other cells. They grab a healthy-looking larva for each and drench it in an extra dollop of royal jelly that makes it grow faster, bigger, and with fully developed sex organs. The first queen that emerges kills off her rivals, and goes on a mating flight to meet some cute drones and make sweet but fatal love to them. She comes back with enough sperm to last a lifetime of egg-laying.

Now this part is kind of cool: The sperm stays in a special repository from which she can at will decide whether to fertilize an egg or not. Why the choice? Weirdly, it's for gender selection. If she chooses to fertilize an egg, it hatches a female worker bee. If she chooses to not fertilize an egg, it hatches a drone.

The queen lays eggs.

She's the only one

that does, and she

does it nearly

constantly during

honey season.

BLUE BLOODS

The queen isn't the only blue blood in a beehive. It turns out that bee blood really is a greenish-blue color. So I make a point to honor each of them as royalty, from the lowliest nursery worker to soaring superstar foragers.

Drones: Drones are the few males in a hive, and they play up the role like the pampered gigolos they are, hanging around, doing no work, living off the work of their sisters. Each hive in an area provides drones that head to a designated drone area, waiting for any virgin queen to fly by looking for a good time. The variety of drones hanging around somewhat minimizes the chance of in-breeding with their queenly sisters, but these things happen even in the best of hives. Still, there are some interesting varieties of sexual experience among bees that you won't read about in the Kama Sutra. Mating in midair, for example, swooping and diving toward the ground. Unfortunately, the drones' pleasure is even more short-lived than most males. As they withdraw, they discover that their penises are still inextricably stuck inside the queen. When they tear away from their lover, they really tear away from her, crumpling to the ground in a painful death. Any drones that manage to survive into the fall are given the boot to die in the cold as winter approaches. Cruel, but understandable.