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Honey Bees are extremely important for farmers and many
wild plants. When flying from flower to flower to collect food, they
help fertilize the plants. Humans also use some of their products, such
as honey and wax. Even the bee’s venom is useful for medicinal
purposes. Bees are cold-blooded animals. They have to regulate their
body temperature by moving their flight muscles. This way they can
maintain a constant temperature in the hive, no matter what the
temperature is outside! |
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The Honey Bee is a social insect. A small hive may
contain 20,000 bees. These bees are divided into three castes: queen,
drone, and worker. There is usually only one queen in the colony. She is
the only fertile female in the hive, and her job is to lay eggs. The
drone is a male bee. His only job is to mate with the queen. There can
be up to 500 drones in the hive. The rest of the bees are workers. They
are actually infertile females. The workers have lots of tasks to
perform, such as feeding the queen, cleaning the hive, tending to the
young and defending the hive from invaders. The worker is equipped with
a stinger and a venom pouch. When used, the stinger is ripped out of the
workers body and left in the invaders. The worker bee soon dies from the
rupture. Honey Bees are not likely to sting unless they are provoked. If
a hive gets overcrowded, it happens that the queen leaves the hive with
some of her workers to start a new colony somewhere else. This is called
“swarming”. The mother queen leaves a daughter queen behind, to take
over the old colony. |
