Honey Bees Colony and Its Organization

Honey Bees Colony and Its Organization

Honey bees are social insects, which means that they live together in large, well-organized family groups. Social insects are highly evolved insects that engage in a variety of complex tasks not practiced by the multitude of solitary insects. Communication, complex nest construction, environmental control, defense, and division of the labor are just some of the behaviors that honey bees have developed to exist successfully in social colonies.


These fascinating behaviors make social insects in general, and honey bees in particular, among the most fascinating creatures on earth.
A honey bee colony typically consists of three kinds of adult bees: workers, drones, and a queen (Figure 1). Several thousand worker bees cooperate in nest building, food collection, and brood rearing. Each worker has a definite task to perform, related to its adult age. But surviving and reproducing take the combined efforts of the entire colony.

Individual bees (workers, drones, and queens) cannot survive without the support of the colony.
In addition to thousands of worker adults, a colony normally has a single queen and several
hundred drones during late spring and summer.
The social structure of the colony is maintained by the presence of the queen and workers and depends on an effective system of communication.
The distribution of chemical pheromones among members and communicative “dances” are responsible
for controlling the activities necessary for colony survival. Labor activities among worker bees depend primarily on the age of the bee but vary with the needs of the colony. Reproduction and colony strength depend on the queen, the quantity of food stores, and the size of the worker force. As the size of the colony increases up to a maximum of about 60,000 workers, so does the efficiency of the colony. (by Delaware).