Text Transcript with Description of Visuals
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| [Music] | ABEJAS Logo in front of honey bees crawling on frame Title: Module 1.1 Life Cycle of a Honey Bee |
| Welcome to the second video of ABEJAS. This video will teach you about the life cycle of a honey bee. As a reminder, honey bee colonies have different types of bees, including a queen, workers and drones. There is one queen to every colony, and she is the only reproductive female. There are thousands of worker bees and they are all sterile females. Drones are male bees. The number of drones in a colony varies throughout a season, and their main duty is to mate with a queen during a mating flight. | Beekeeper in an apiary talking to camera Bulleted list appears and speaker reads off topics listed |
| All honey bees go through three developmental stages before they are adult bees: egg, larva, and pupa. | Close up of honey bee frame containing different stages of brood. Red arrows appear with text “Pupa”, “Larva”, “Egg” |
| This table summarizes the time it takes for each type of honey bee, queen, worker, or drone to develop through each developmental stage. Let’s talk more about the worker bee lifecycle first. | Beekeeper in an apiary talking to camera Diagram of queen, worker and drone development in days |
| [Music] | ABEJAS Logo with red background. Text on screen: Life cycle of worker bees |
| The queen lays fertilized eggs in the bottom of a comb cell. Worker bees develop as eggs for three days. Once an egg hatches, it develops as a larva for 5 to 6 days, becoming larger and more plump each day. After the larva is ready to pupate, an adult nurse bee will cap the cell with wax. The bee pupates under the capped cell for about 12 days. | Profile view of egg laid inside wax cell. Text on screen: An egg in the bottom of a cell Larvae and eggs inside honey bee cells. Text on screen: Eggs and different ages of larvae Close up of older, plump white larvae and capped brood cells with honey bees crawling around. Text on screen: Older larvae (left) and capped brood cells (right) |
| During this stage, the pupa develops recognizable features of an adult bee, such as eyes, legs, wings, hairs, and body segments. | Beekeeper in an apiary talking to camera Diagram of life cycle of honey bees showing queen laying an egg, offspring developing, then adult bee emerging |
| As adult worker bees are ready to emerge, they will slowly chew through the wax capping that was covering their cell. These newborn adults will soon become nurse bees and be responsible for caring for the brood until they grow old enough to be foragers. Nurse bees are hairier and often have light tufts of hair on their head and thorax. Adult worker bees live nearly 4 to 5 weeks in the summer, and about 4 to 8 weeks in the spring and early fall. In the late fall and winter adult workers go through a physiological change that allows them to live much longer to survive the winter. | Newly emerging bee chewing her way out of cell, red circle appears Newly emerged bee crawling out of cell onto frame Fuzzy bee on frame, red circle appears Honey bees flying into hive entrance |
| These winter bees live 5 to 10 months. This is something that will be discussedmore in a later video about overwintering. | Bees pollinating pink flower |
| Now let’s talk more about the queen bee’s life cycle. | Beekeeper in an apiary talking to camera |
| [Music] | ABEJAS Logo with red background. Text on screen: Life cycle of queen bees |
| The queen typically lives for 1 to 3 years, but in some cases queens can live more than five years. | Honey bees crawling on hive frame with queen bee, a green dot is painted on the queens thorax. |
| Beekeepers may replace an older queen through re-queening to maintain a productive colony. Queens develop in special cells that hang down on the face of the comb. | Beekeeper holding a cage with a queen inside Queen crawling around inside cage A person points at a queen cell on the bottom of a hive frame |
| ney bee queens take about 16 days to develop from an egg to an adult. | Beekeeper in an apiary talking to camera Diagram of queen, worker and drone development in days |
| A queen bee develops as an egg for three days, then a larva for about five days. During their larval development they are fed a special diet rich with royal jelly. Royal jelly is produced by glands in the heads of the worker bees. Female workers and the queen are genetically identical, but the royal jelly diet influences the expression of certain genes that will cause the queen to become fertile and reproductive. | A close up of a newly formed queen cell with an egg inside A close up of a queen cell with an larva inside Honey bees crawling on frame, red circle appears around one bee. Text on screen: Worker bees feeding royal jelly to queen larvae. A close up of a queen cell with an larva and white pool of liquid inside. Text on screen: Here you can see both royal jelly and larvae in the queen cells |
| After the queen cell is capped the queen develops as a pupa for an additional eight days. Then the queen emerges as an adult. Honey bee queens are fully mature about 5 to 6 days after emergence. | A capped queen cell, red circle appears. Text on screen: A capped queen cell A person points at empty queen cells. Text on screen: These are queen cells that a queen has emerged from. |
| Once the queen is mature, she will take a mating flight. Queens do not mate with the male bees inside of their own colony. A queen will leave the hive to find drones from other colonies to mate with. | A queen bee crawling on frame, her abdomen is shorter than mated queens. Text on screen: This is a virgin queen that has not yet performed her mating flight |
| This reduces chances of inbreeding, but does increase the risk of death from predation outside of the hive. | Bees flying in apiary |
| Drones, or male bees, are a crucial part of a successful mating. They will congregate in an area called a drone congregation area, or DCA, and queens will locate these areas to mate with about 10 to 20 drones. | Bees crawling around metal cage. Text on screen: Drones caged for breeding purposes [Credited footage: Project Apis m] Footage of bees flying in a lush environment [Credited footage: Julia Mahood]. Text on screen: A drone congregation area (DCA) |
| During this mating flight, the queen will mate with numerous male bees and store the semen in a special storage organ called a spermatheca. | Two spheres with white arrows pointing to them. One on left is translucent and labeled “spermatheca from a virgin queen”, the one on right is cloudy and opaque, labeled “spermatheca from a mated queen”. Black arrow points to white glob between the two spheres and is labeled “Tracheal net” [Credited image: Sue Cobey] |
| A queen may take multiple mating flights to mate with additional drones. If she did not mate with enough during her first flight. | Honey bees crawling on hive frame Zooms in on queen bee that has red dot on thorax. Text on screen: Mature, mated queen |
| Once the queen has stored enough semen, she will return to the colony and will not mate again for the rest of her life. | Queen bee headfirst in a yellow tube. Text on screen: This queen is being artificially inseminated for breeding purposes. |
| [Music] | ABEJAS Logo with red background. Text on screen: Life cycle of drone bees |
| Next, we will talk about drones. Drones take about 24 days to develop from an egg into an adult bee. | Beekeeper in an apiary talking to camera Two bees with white arrows pointing to them. One on left is labeled “Worker” and one on right is “Drone” |
| The queen lays unfertilized eggs in cells with a larger diameter. These eggs will develop into drones. | Close up of a drone (male) bee crawling on frame |
| Drones develop as eggs for three days, then develop as larvae for 6 to 7 days. | Beekeeper in an apiary talking to camera Diagram of queen, worker and drone development in days |
| They are larger than female workers, so once a drone larva is ready to pupate. Nurse bees put a more bulbous wax cap over the larger drone cell. Drones live as adults for about eight weeks. | Capped drone cells on honey bee frame. Text on screen: Capped drone cells Close up of capped drone cell Newly emerging drone coming out of cell |
| Their main purpose is to mate with queens. | Person holding dead drone. Text on screen: A drone bee with everted endophallus |
| As a season comes to an end, the workers will exile the drones from the colony where they will die. It is not uncommon to see large numbers of dead drones outside the hive in the late fall. | Worker bee carrying drone out of hive entrance. Text on screen: Worker bees removing a drone from the hive |
| [Music] | Drone bee crawling on frame |
| Now that you know more about the life cycles of different members of a honey bee colony, you can begin recognizing these various stages when you are performing colony inspections. | Beekeeper in an apiary talking to camera ABEJAS logo, list of two upcoming videos, and @wsubeeprogram YouTube Logo appears |
| [Music] | Bees crawling on frame Overlay of WSU Bee Program, Washington State University, Wonderstone Films, United States Department of Agriculture, Project Apis m, Miller Honey Farms, and University of Minnesota Extension logos appear Scrolling list of people involved in development of videos appears |
| If you’ve enjoyed this video, please subscribe to the channel and leave us a comment below to let us know what additional topics you would like us to cover in future videos. | A beekeeper closing a clapperboard that says “WSU ABEJAS English” Beekeeper in an apiary talking to camera |