Bees Throughout The Ages

The major advantage shared by these designs is that additional brood and honey storage space can be added via boxes of frames added to the hive. This also simplifies honey collection since an entire box of honey can be removed instead of removing one frame at a time. Most beekeepers also wear some protective clothing.

Novice beekeepers usually wear gloves and a hooded suit or hat and veil. Experienced beekeepers sometimes elect not to use gloves because they inhibit delicate manipulations. The face and neck are the most important areas to protect, so most beekeepers wear at least a veil.

Defensive bees are attracted to the breath, and a sting on the face can lead to much more pain and swelling than a sting elsewhere, while a sting on a bare hand can usually be quickly removed by fingernail scrape to reduce the amount of venom injected. The protective clothing is generally light colored but not colorful and of a smooth material. This provides the maximum differentiation from the colony's natural predators such as bears and skunks which tend to be dark-colored and furry. Washing suits regularly, and rinsing gloved hands in vinegar minimizes attraction.

Smoke is the beekeeper's third line of defense. Most beekeepers use a "smoker"—a device designed to generate smoke from the incomplete combustion of various fuels. Smoke calms bees; it initiates a feeding response in anticipation of possible hive abandonment due to fire.

The ensuing confusion creates an opportunity for the beekeeper to open the hive and work without triggering a defensive reaction. In addition, when a bee consumes honey the bee's abdomen distends, supposedly making it difficult to make the necessary flexes to sting, though this has not been tested scientifically.

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Smoke is of questionable use with a swarm, because swarms do not have honey stores to feed on in response. Usually smoke is not needed, since swarms tend to be less defensive, as they have no stores or brood to defend, and a fresh swarm has fed well from the hive. Many types of fuel can be used in a smoker as long as it is natural and not contaminated with harmful substances.

These fuels include hessian , twine , burlap , pine needles, corrugated cardboard, and mostly rotten or punky wood. Indian beekeepers, especially in Kerala, often use coconut fibers as they are readily available, safe, and of negligible expense. Some beekeeping supply sources also sell commercial fuels like pulped paper and compressed cotton, or even aerosol cans of smoke. Other beekeepers use sumac as fuel because it ejects lots of smoke and doesn't have an odor. Some beekeepers are using "liquid smoke" as a safer, more convenient alternative.

It is a water-based solution that is sprayed onto the bees from a plastic spray bottle. Torpor may also be induced by the introduction of chilled air into the hive — while chilled carbon dioxide may have harmful long-term effects. Some beekeepers believe that the more stings a beekeeper receives, the less irritation each causes, and they consider it important for safety of the beekeeper to be stung a few times a season. Beekeepers have high levels of antibodies mainly IgG reacting to the major antigen of bee venom , phospholipase A2 PLA. The entry of venom into the body from bee-stings may also be hindered and reduced by protective clothing that allows the wearer to remove stings and venom sacs with a simple tug on the clothing.

Although the stinger is barbed, a worker bee is less likely to become lodged into clothing than human skin. If a beekeeper is stung by a bee, there are many protective measures that should be taken in order to make sure the affected area does not become too irritated. The first cautionary step that should be taken following a bee sting is removing the stinger without squeezing the attached venom glands. A quick scrape with a fingernail is effective and intuitive. This step is effective in making sure that the venom injected does not spread, so the side effects of the sting will go away sooner.

Washing the affected area with soap and water is also a good way to stop the spread of venom. The last step that needs to be taken is to apply ice or a cold compress to the stung area. The natural beekeeping movement believes that modern beekeeping and agricultural practices, such as crop spraying, hive movement, frequent hive inspections, artificial insemination of queens, routine medication, and sugar water feeding, weaken bee hives.

Practitioners of "natural beekeeping" tend to use variations of the top-bar hive, which is a simple design that retains the concept of movable comb without the use of frames or foundation. The horizontal top-bar hive, as championed by Marty Hardison, Michael Bush, Philip Chandler, Dennis Murrell and others, can be seen as a modernization of hollow log hives, with the addition of wooden bars of specific width from which bees hang their combs.

Its widespread adoption in recent years can be attributed to the publication in of The Barefoot Beekeeper [33] by Philip Chandler, which challenged many aspects of modern beekeeping and offered the horizontal top-bar hive as a viable alternative to the ubiquitous Langstroth-style movable-frame hive.

Related to natural beekeeping, urban beekeeping is an attempt to revert to a less industrialized way of obtaining honey by utilizing small-scale colonies that pollinate urban gardens. Urban apiculture has undergone a renaissance in the first decade of the 21st century, and urban beekeeping is seen by many as a growing trend. Some have found that "city bees" are actually healthier than "rural bees" because there are fewer pesticides and greater biodiversity.

An environment of year-round, uninterrupted bloom creates an ideal environment for colony reproduction. Urban beekeepers are testing modern types of beehive, thought for urban contest and easy to use. In appeared FlowHive and in Beeing , a Made in Italy hive, that allows to extract honey without entering in touch with the bees. Modern beekeepers have experimented with raising bees indoors, in a controlled environment or in indoor observation hives.

This may be done for reasons of space and monitoring, or in the off-season. In the off-season, large commercial beekeepers may move colonies to "wintering" warehouses, with fixed temperature, light and humidity. This helps the bees remain healthy, but relatively dormant. Wintered bees survive on stored honey, and new bees are not born. Experiments in raising bees for longer durations indoors have looked into more detailed and varying environment controls. In , MIT 's Synthetic Apiary project simulated springtime inside a closed environment, for a number of hives over the course of a winter.

They provided food sources and simulated long days, and saw activity and reproduction levels comparable to that seen outdoors in warm weather. They concluded that such an indoor apiary could be sustained year-round if needed. The queen is the only sexually mature female in the hive and all of the female worker bees and male drones are her offspring.

The queen may live for up to three years or more and may be capable of laying half a million eggs or more in her lifetime. At the peak of the breeding season, late spring to summer, a good queen may be capable of laying 3, eggs in one day, more than her own body weight. This would be exceptional however; a prolific queen might peak at 2, eggs a day, but a more average queen might lay just 1, eggs per day. The queen is raised from a normal worker egg, but is fed a larger amount of royal jelly than a normal worker bee, resulting in a radically different growth and metamorphosis.

The queen influences the colony by the production and dissemination of a variety of pheromones or "queen substances". One of these chemicals suppresses the development of ovaries in all the female worker bees in the hive and prevents them from laying eggs. The queen emerges from her cell after 15 days of development and she remains in the hive for 3—7 days before venturing out on a mating flight. Mating flight is otherwise known as "nuptial flight".

Her first orientation flight may only last a few seconds, just enough to mark the position of the hive. Subsequent mating flights may last from 5 minutes to 30 minutes, and she may mate with a number of male drones on each flight. Over several matings, possibly a dozen or more, the queen receives and stores enough sperm from a succession of drones to fertilize hundreds of thousands of eggs.

If she does not manage to leave the hive to mate—possibly due to bad weather or being trapped in part of the hive—she remains infertile and becomes a drone layer , incapable of producing female worker bees. Worker bees sometimes kill a non-performing queen and produce another. Without a properly performing queen, the hive is doomed. Mating takes place at some distance from the hive and often several hundred feet in the air; it is thought that this separates the strongest drones from the weaker ones, ensuring that only the fastest and strongest drones get to pass on their genes.

Most of the bees in a hive are female worker bees. At the height of summer when activity in the hive is frantic and work goes on non-stop, the life of a worker bee may be as short as 6 weeks; in late autumn, when no brood is being raised and no nectar is being harvested, a young bee may live for 16 weeks, right through the winter. Over the course of their lives, worker bees' duties are dictated by age.

For the first few weeks of their lifespan, they perform basic chores within the hive: Later, they may ventilate the hive or guard the entrance. Older workers leave the hive daily, weather permitting, to forage for nectar, pollen, water, and propolis. Drones are the largest bees in the hive except for the queen , at almost twice the size of a worker bee. Note in the picture that they have much larger eyes than the workers have, presumably to better locate the queen during the mating flight. They do not work, do not forage for pollen or nectar, are unable to sting, and have no other known function than to mate with new queens and fertilize them on their mating flights.

A bee colony generally starts to raise drones a few weeks before building queen cells so they can supersede a failing queen or prepare for swarming. When queen-raising for the season is over, bees in colder climates drive drones out of the hive to die, biting and tearing their legs and wings. A domesticated bee colony is normally housed in a rectangular hive body, within which eight to ten parallel frames house the vertical plates of honeycomb that contain the eggs, larvae, pupae and food for the colony. If one were to cut a vertical cross-section through the hive from side to side, the brood nest would appear as a roughly ovoid ball spanning 5—8 frames of comb.

The two outside combs at each side of the hive tend to be exclusively used for long-term storage of honey and pollen. Within the central brood nest, a single frame of comb typically has a central disk of eggs, larvae and sealed brood cells that may extend almost to the edges of the frame. Immediately above the brood patch an arch of pollen -filled cells extends from side to side, and above that again a broader arch of honey-filled cells extends to the frame tops.

The pollen is protein-rich food for developing larvae, while honey is also food but largely energy rich rather than protein rich. The nurse bees that care for the developing brood secrete a special food called " royal jelly " after feeding themselves on honey and pollen. The amount of royal jelly fed to a larva determines whether it develops into a worker bee or a queen.

Apart from the honey stored within the central brood frames, the bees store surplus honey in combs above the brood nest. In modern hives the beekeeper places separate boxes, called "supers", above the brood box, in which a series of shallower combs is provided for storage of honey. This enables the beekeeper to remove some of the supers in the late summer, and to extract the surplus honey harvest, without damaging the colony of bees and its brood nest below.

If all the honey is "stolen", including the amount of honey needed to survive winter, the beekeeper must replace these stores by feeding the bees sugar or corn syrup in autumn. The development of a bee colony follows an annual cycle of growth that begins in spring with a rapid expansion of the brood nest, as soon as pollen is available for feeding larvae. Some production of brood may begin as early as January, even in a cold winter, but breeding accelerates towards a peak in May in the northern hemisphere , producing an abundance of harvesting bees synchronized to the main nectar flow in that region.

Each race of bees times this build-up slightly differently, depending on how the flora of its original region blooms. Some regions of Europe have two nectar flows: Other regions have only a single nectar flow. The skill of the beekeeper lies in predicting when the nectar flow will occur in his area and in trying to ensure that his colonies achieve a maximum population of harvesters at exactly the right time. The key factor in this is the prevention or skillful management of the swarming impulse.

If a colony swarms unexpectedly and the beekeeper does not manage to capture the resulting swarm, he is likely to harvest significantly less honey from that hive, since he has lost half his worker bees at a single stroke. If, however, he can use the swarming impulse to breed a new queen but keep all the bees in the colony together, he maximizes his chances of a good harvest.

It takes many years of learning and experience to be able to manage all these aspects successfully, though owing to variable circumstances many beginners often achieve a good honey harvest. All colonies are totally dependent on their queen, who is the only egg-layer. However, even the best queens live only a few years and one or two years longevity is the norm.

She can choose whether or not to fertilize an egg as she lays it; if she does so, it develops into a female worker bee; if she lays an unfertilized egg it becomes a male drone. She decides which type of egg to lay depending on the size of the open brood cell she encounters on the comb. In a small worker cell, she lays a fertilized egg; if she finds a larger drone cell, she lays an unfertilized drone egg.

Bees Throughout The Ages Archives - DrBeekeeper

All the time that the queen is fertile and laying eggs she produces a variety of pheromones, which control the behavior of the bees in the hive. These are commonly called queen substance , but there are various pheromones with different functions. As the queen ages, she begins to run out of stored sperm, and her pheromones begin to fail. Inevitably, the queen begins to falter, and the bees decide to replace her by creating a new queen from one of her worker eggs.

They may do this because she has been damaged lost a leg or an antenna , because she has run out of sperm and cannot lay fertilized eggs has become a "drone laying queen" , or because her pheromones have dwindled to where they cannot control all the bees in the hive. At this juncture, the bees produce one or more queen cells by modifying existing worker cells that contain a normal female egg.

They then pursue one of two ways to replace the queen: Supersedure is highly valued as a behavioral trait by beekeepers. A hive that supersedes its old queen does not lose any stock. Instead it creates a new queen and the old one fades away or is killed when the new queen emerges. In these hives, the bees produce just one or two queen cells, characteristically in the center of the face of a broodcomb. Swarm cell production involves creating many queen cells, typically a dozen or more. These are located around the edges of a broodcomb, often at the sides and the bottom.

Once either process has begun, the old queen leaves the hive with the hatching of the first queen cells. She leaves accompanied by a large number of bees, predominantly young bees wax-secretors , who form the basis of the new hive. Scouts are sent out from the swarm to find suitable hollow trees or rock crevices. As soon as one is found, the entire swarm moves in. Within a matter of hours, they build new wax brood combs, using honey stores that the young bees have filled themselves with before leaving the old hive. Only young bees can secrete wax from special abdominal segments, and this is why swarms tend to contain more young bees.

Often a number of virgin queens accompany the first swarm the "prime swarm" , and the old queen is replaced as soon as a daughter queen mates and begins laying. Otherwise, she is quickly superseded in the new home. Different sub-species of Apis mellifera exhibit differing swarming characteristics. In general the more northerly black races are said to swarm less and supersede more, whereas the more southerly yellow and grey varieties are said to swarm more frequently.

The truth is complicated because of the prevalence of cross-breeding and hybridization of the sub species. It is generally accepted that a colony of bees does not swarm until they have completed all of their brood combs, i. This generally occurs in late spring at a time when the other areas of the hive are rapidly filling with honey stores. One key trigger of the swarming instinct is when the queen has no more room to lay eggs and the hive population is becoming very congested.

Under these conditions, a prime swarm may issue with the queen, resulting in a significant decrease in the population within the hive, leaving the old colony with a large number of hatching bees. The queen who leaves finds herself in a new hive with no eggs and no larvae but lots of energetic young bees who create a new set of brood combs from scratch in a very short time. Another important factor in swarming is the age of the queen. Those under a year in age are unlikely to swarm unless they are extremely crowded, while older queens have swarming predisposition.

Some beekeepers may monitor their colonies carefully in spring and watch for the appearance of queen cells, which are a dramatic signal that the colony is determined to swarm. When a colony has decided to swarm, queen cells are produced in numbers varying to a dozen or more. When the first of these queen cells is sealed after eight days of larval feeding, a virgin queen pupates and is due to emerge seven days later. Before leaving, the worker bees fill their stomachs with honey in preparation for the creation of new honeycombs in a new home.

This cargo of honey also makes swarming bees less inclined to sting. A newly issued swarm is noticeably gentle for up to 24 hours and is often capable of being handled by a beekeeper without gloves or veil. This swarm looks for shelter. A beekeeper may capture it and introduce it into a new hive, helping meet this need.

Otherwise, it returns to a feral state, in which case it finds shelter in a hollow tree, excavation, abandoned chimney, or even behind shutters. Back at the original hive, the first virgin queen to emerge from her cell immediately seeks to kill all her rival queens still waiting to emerge. Usually, however, the bees deliberately prevent her from doing this, in which case, she too leads a second swarm from the hive.

Successive swarms are called "after-swarms" or "casts" and can be very small, often with just a thousand or so bees—as opposed to a prime swarm, which may contain as many as ten to twenty-thousand bees. A small after-swarm has less chance of survival and may threaten the original hive's survival if the number of individuals left is unsustainable. When a hive swarms despite the beekeeper's preventative efforts, a good management practice is to give the reduced hive a couple frames of open brood with eggs. This helps replenish the hive more quickly and gives a second opportunity to raise a queen if there is a mating failure.

Each race or sub-species of honey bee has its own swarming characteristics. Italian bees are very prolific and inclined to swarm; Northern European black bees have a strong tendency to supersede their old queen without swarming. These differences are the result of differing evolutionary pressures in the regions where each sub-species evolved.

When a colony accidentally loses its queen, it is said to be "queenless". The workers realize that the queen is absent after as little as an hour, as her pheromones fade in the hive. The colony cannot survive without a fertile queen laying eggs to renew the population, so the workers select cells containing eggs aged less than three days and enlarge these cells dramatically to form "emergency queen cells".

These appear similar to large peanut-like structures about an inch long that hang from the center or side of the brood combs. The developing larva in a queen cell is fed differently from an ordinary worker-bee; in addition to the normal honey and pollen, she receives a great deal of royal jelly, a special food secreted by young "nurse bees" from the hypopharyngeal gland.

This special food dramatically alters the growth and development of the larva so that, after metamorphosis and pupation, it emerges from the cell as a queen bee. The queen is the only bee in a colony which has fully developed ovaries, and she secretes a pheromone which suppresses the normal development of ovaries in all her workers. Beekeepers use the ability of the bees to produce new queens to increase their colonies in a procedure called splitting a colony.

To do this, they remove several brood combs from a healthy hive, taking care to leave the old queen behind. These combs must contain eggs or larvae less than three days old and be covered by young nurse bees , which care for the brood and keep it warm. These brood combs and attendant nurse bees are then placed into a small "nucleus hive" with other combs containing honey and pollen. As soon as the nurse bees find themselves in this new hive and realize they have no queen, they set about constructing emergency queen cells using the eggs or larvae they have in the combs with them.

The common agents of disease that affect adult honey bees include fungi , bacteria , protozoa , viruses , parasites , and poisons. The gross symptoms displayed by affected adult bees are very similar, whatever the cause, making it difficult for the apiarist to ascertain the causes of problems without microscopic identification of microorganisms or chemical analysis of poisons.

The tunnels they create are lined with silk, which entangles and starves emerging bees. Destruction of honeycombs also results in honey leaking and being wasted. A healthy hive can manage wax moths, but weak colonies, unoccupied hives, and stored frames can be decimated. Small hive beetle Aethina tumida is native to Africa but has now spread to most continents.

It is a serious pest among honey bees unadapted to it. Varroa destructor , the Varroa mite, is an established pest of two species of honey bee through many parts of the world, and is blamed by many researchers as a leading cause of CCD. Acarapis woodi , the tracheal mite, infests the trachea of honey bees.

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The intensive management for Varroa has apparently reduced this parasite concurrently. FAO data , the world's beehive stock rose from around 50 million in to around 83 million in , which comes to about 1. Average annual growth has accelerated to 1. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. March Learn how and when to remove this template message.

This section needs additional citations for verification. June Learn how and when to remove this template message. List of diseases of the honey bee. Explicit use of et al. The world history of beekeeping and honey hunting. Although there are a few contradictory reports, overall the evidence supports the proposition that worker bees both nurses and foragers exhibit senescence.

However, no study has directly assessed queen-worker differences in aging rates. These results suggest that, while workers are experiencing senescent decline in stress resistance by this age, and are not expected to live much longer, queens are highly stress resistant and expected to live more than fold longer. A reasonable interpretation of this result is that at least part of the difference in queen and worker life span can be attributed to differences in intrinsic rates of aging. Nonetheless, a direct comparison of queen and worker lifespan, and assessment of stress resistance throughout the lifespan, would place the intrinsic senescence hypothesis on firmer footing.

Direct comparisons of queen and worker lifespan, and other aspects of age-related performance will be difficult, at least in honey bees. In this species, it is problematic to house queens and workers under equivalent conditions. Workers cannot be confined for prolonged periods because they must fly in order to defecate. Queens cannot be kept in isolation from workers, since they do not feed themselves. Queens are fed and groomed by nurse bees, making it difficult to house them in the laboratory for long periods.

It might be possible to make rearing conditions more equivalent by, for example, restricting the amount of time workers are allowed to fly. However, energy expenditure, and other differences in lifestyle between queens and workers probably cannot be made entirely equivalent. As outlined above, there is a well-accepted model for the evolution of long life in social insect queens.

However, how queens achieve both long life and sustained high fecundity, compared to other insects, is not yet understood. Several proximate mechanisms for this phenomenon have been proposed; here we review three of the most prominent: The oxidative stress theory of aging Harman states that cumulative oxidative damage causes aging and that lifespan is inversely related to the rate at which damage occurs.

Therefore, a long-lived organism, such as the queen honey bee, should have a lower rate of reactive oxygen species ROS production, eliminate ROS more effectively, or better repair oxidative damage in order to minimize accumulation of damage. The first direct test of this hypothesis in a social insect was conducted by Parker et al.

Using honey bees, Corona et al. Confirming the results reported by Parker et al. These two studies indicate that increased antioxidant expression is not a prerequisite for long lifespan in social insects, but do not rule out the possibility that increased lifespan is related to lower ROS production, an alternate mechanism of ROS scavenging Corona et al. Another hypothesis suggested by Haddad et al. It is possible that honey bees use less well studied molecules for ROS scavenging.

Oxidative stress resistance in workers has been linked to the expression of vitellogenin Vg Seehuus et al. Vitellogenin is a female-specific glycolipoprotein synthesized in the fat body of the abdomen, and transported to the ovaries and other body tissues Amdam et al. Consistent with these findings, Corona et al. Insects possess cellular and humoral immune mechanisms that identify and eliminate foreign tissue and pathogens.

Cell-mediated immunity involves hemocytes, which are able to recognize and phagocytose foreign bodies present in the hemolymph. Hemocytes also have the ability to form groups that encapsulate large foreign bodies and nodules to trap invading bacteria. In addition to cell-mediated immunity, insects synthesize antibacterial peptides in the fat body in response to microbial infection Klowden Moreover, honey bees and other social insects employ behavioral strategies, such as grooming, to fight pathogens reviewed in Evans A general feature of aging in animals is the deterioration of immune efficiency, or immunosenescence Solana and Pawelec A decline with age in the encapsulation and melanization wound response has been observed in worker bumble bees with no corresponding decrease in hemocyte numbers Doums et al.

That conclusion was based on a social manipulation that forced foragers to reverse to the nursing stage. This manipulation resulted in reverted old nurses that were physiologically similar to normal-age nurses low JH titers, high Vg titers, enlarged hypopharyngeal glands and had higher hemocyte counts than foragers of the same chronological age. In contrast, Schmid et al. Neither of these studies linked measures of immune system components directly to mortality rates or senescence, and both contrast with a report that challenges to the immune system of bumble bees, which should increase immune component expression, actually led to decreased survival under starvation conditions Moret and Schmid-Hempel In fact, chronic immune system activation can cause decreased lifespan in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster Libert Thus, it is not clear that upregulation of immune system components, should be directly associated with longer lifespan.

The insulin insulin-like signaling IIS pathway regulates metabolism, development, reproduction, and longevity in model organisms, including nematode worms, fruit flies, and, and mammals reviewed in Kenyon ; Partridge and Gems , Hughes and Reynolds ; Sinclair et al. In addition to its potential effect on caste determination during development Wheeler et al.

Recent studies suggest that the IIS pathway interacts with Vg and JH to regulate honey bee lifespan, and these interactions may provide the key to both the long life and high fecundity of the queen Corona et al. Similar models of endocrine regulation have been proposed to explain life history variation between nurses and foragers and between workers in divergent selection lines Amdam and Omholt b ; Amdam et al. Here we focus on endocrine signaling differences that may lead to variation in lifespan between queen and worker honey bees.

In Drosophila, JH and Vg abundance are positively correlated, and a calorically enriched diet causes increased signaling through the IIS pathway, which in turn shortens lifespan Tu et al. In honey bees, JH and Vg abundance are negatively correlated: The association between nutrition and lifespan is also reversed in honey bees compared to that in model organisms. In bees, enriched nutrition in queens, and in nurses compared to foragers is associated with low expression of insulin-like peptides and insulin receptors.

This pattern suggests that, unlike in flies, worms, or mice, caloric intake in bees is negatively correlated with signaling through the IIS pathway however, effects on IIS of direct manipulation of caloric intake have not been reported. These observations, together with the models of endocrine regulation in workers proposed by Amdam and colleagues, led Corona et al. In this model, key differences between these mechanisms in honey bees and fruit flies account for the inverse relationship between nutrition and insulin signaling, the resulting low JH levels that induce Vg expression, and a proposed negative feedback loop linking high Vg with repression of the IIS pathway Fig.

Under this model, low signaling through the IIS pathway accounts for queen longevity, while the ability to maintain high Vg titers despite low IIS signaling allows for prolonged high fecundity. While aspects of this model are untested e. Model of insulin insulin-like signaling IIS and lifespan regulation in adult queen honey bees compared to Drosophila. In honey bees, high nutrition leads to low signaling through the IIS and longer lifespan. In fruit flies, high nutrition is associated with a decrease in lifespan.

JH hormone levels are positively related to Vg levels. Social insects in general, and honey bees in particular, provide a unique system for aging research. Based on inferences from ecological and population genetic studies, it seems likely that the striking longevity and fecundity of social insect queens evolved as a consequence of selection pressure accompanying the evolution of eusociality.

Alternatively, it is possible that the causality was reversed, and that long life set the stage for the evolution of eusociality Carey ; a similar hypothesis has been proposed for the evolution of cooperative breeding in birds Arnold and Owens ; Ridley et al. It will probably be difficult to test these alternatives directly, although an experimental evolutionary approach might be feasible in the laboratory. For example, aspects of a eusocial lifestyle might be mimicked in a selection experiment using an originally non-eusocial organism, and evolutionary changes in lifespan could then be monitored.

Admittedly, it is more difficult to imagine an equivalent experiment to test the idea that long life led to eusociality. The physiological and molecular basis of queen longevity and the dramatic lifespan differences between queens and workers is just beginning to be explored, but shows great promise. This work has already helped to shape fundamental questions for both molecular and evolutionary biologists.

For example, how have the traditional relationships between nutrition, IIS signaling, and vitellogenesis been reversed in honey bees? Does the same mechanism underlie lifespan extension in all social insects, or have different taxa evolved different mechanisms? Did novel functions of Vg evolve before or after the evolution of caste differentiation Corona et al.

We look forward to the resolution of at least some of these issues in the near future. The authors wish to thank Katelyn Michelini, Scott Kreher, Deborah Kristan, Donna Holmes and one anonymous reviewer for comments that greatly improved the manuscript. National Center for Biotechnology Information , U. Journal List Age Dordr v. Published online Jun Remolina and Kimberly A. Author information Article notes Copyright and License information Disclaimer. Received Apr 22; Accepted May 6. This article has been cited by other articles in PMC.

Abstract Honey bees Apis mellifera are eusocial insects that exhibit striking caste-specific differences in longevity. Introduction Advanced insect societies, such as those of ants, bees, wasps, and termites, are characterized by overlapping generations of adult colony members, a system of caste division reproductive vs non-reproductive individuals , and cooperative care for young colony members Wilson Life history, caste-specific lifespan and reproductive behavior Honey bees are social insects with a haplodiploid sex determination system, in which unfertilized eggs laid by the queen develop into drones male bees and fertilized eggs develop into either workers or queens both castes consisting of genetically identical female bees.

The Beguiling History of Bees [Excerpt]

Evolutionary and ecological determinants of lifespan Social insect queens, including queen honey bees, are extraordinarily long-lived compared both to non-social insects and workers of their own species. Molecular and physiological mechanisms of extended queen lifespan As outlined above, there is a well-accepted model for the evolution of long life in social insect queens. Oxidative stress resistance The oxidative stress theory of aging Harman states that cumulative oxidative damage causes aging and that lifespan is inversely related to the rate at which damage occurs.

Immunosenescence and immune system tradeoffs Insects possess cellular and humoral immune mechanisms that identify and eliminate foreign tissue and pathogens. Endocrine signaling and the regulation of aging The insulin insulin-like signaling IIS pathway regulates metabolism, development, reproduction, and longevity in model organisms, including nematode worms, fruit flies, and, and mammals reviewed in Kenyon ; Partridge and Gems , Hughes and Reynolds ; Sinclair et al. Open in a separate window. Conclusion Social insects in general, and honey bees in particular, provide a unique system for aging research.

Acknowledgments The authors wish to thank Katelyn Michelini, Scott Kreher, Deborah Kristan, Donna Holmes and one anonymous reviewer for comments that greatly improved the manuscript.

Category: Bees Throughout The Ages

References Anderson J How long does a bee live? J Theor Biol Proc R Soc B Cambridge, England Carey JR Demographic mechanisms for the evolution of long life in social insects. Mech Ageing Dev Insect Mol Biol Cell Mol Life Sci