What You'd See If You Could Walk Into a Beehive

bees first appeared on earth 130 million years ago and they outlived dinos what helped them survive for so long is an incredibly complex structure of their society and teamwork each bee has its own role and responsibility some of them build and repair their home some bees protect it others clean the hive and get food but what if you could sneak into a hive and figure out how this whole system works what would you see inside for some mysterious reason it's easy for you to get past the guards but if you were a bee from another colony they wouldn't let you in without a fight the guard bees look rather intimidating they stand on their back four legs at the hives entrance their front legs raised in the air these bees inspect every insect entering the hive with their antennae and front legs each hive has its own odor and the guards can understand if a bee belongs to their colony by smelling it only the bees that live in the hive can get inside suddenly you see something strange one of the guard bees has detected an intruder an alien bee must have mistakenly tried to enter the wrong hive but it's carrying a load of nectar and the guard lets it in apparently they don't mind accepting free gifts of food even from strangers you feel too curious to linger there any longer the hive has only one entrance you notice that the walls around it look strange you take a closer look and understand that it's coated with a thin layer of some substance it's propolis hardened plant resin produced by bees it helps fight infections and cures different health problems a bit further you can see countless honeycombs their densely packed hexagonal cells made of beeswax these use them to store food pollen and honey that's where they keep eggs larvae and pupin honeycombs are fixed to the walls of the hive they stretch from top to bottom and are even attached to the sides but you spot narrow passageways along the comb edges bees use them to move around the hive you might also be able to squeeze through one of these tunnels after exploring the place you figure out that bees store honey in the upper part of the comb beneath there are cells that contain pollen then there are cells used for keeping eggs with future worker bees and at the very bottom there are drone eggs of course your ultimate goal is to see the queen bee but it's not that easy to find her first you come across lots of other bees most of them are workers they make up the largest part of the hive's population and they're all ladies each of them has its own task the most common of them is foraging you spot a bee leaving a hive and decide to follow it the queen can wait a bit you want to see how bees provide food for the hive the bee is buzzing ahead of you after visiting a couple of flowers it suddenly starts wiggling while hovering in one place ah that's the famous bee dance that's how bees communicate once a forager finds a perfect supply of nectar it starts to perform a very precise dance it consists of a series of straight lines and figure eights throughout the dance the bee is also shaking its wings how long the dance lasts means how far away from the hive the nectar is every 75 milliseconds is another 330 feet to the distance and how intense the dance is depends on the richness of the source of the nectar the stronger the waggle is the more nectar the bee is found and there's also the angle of the dance it shows the direction of the nectar in relation to the sun your bee must have found tons of nectar it's practically vibrating suddenly it starts flying back to the hive you follow it there the bee does a shake dance in front of the other worker bees this is how it tells other bees they need to go foraging right away you decide to stay behind and just watch what will happen soon the bees return they've brought back a lot of nectar that needs to be ripened into honey your bee does a tremble dance this time it's shaking its legs in a way that makes its body tremble all over this little dance makes other workers get down to process the nectar it's time for you to resume your search you dive back into the hive and begin to squeeze through small passageways you come across the cells where worker bees begin their lives as eggs it takes a b 21 days to develop from an egg into a full-grown worker the first task of this new worker is to clean the cell where it grew the cell then becomes a nursery for a new way and the bee looks after this egg later it feeds the larva and keeps it warm during the next stage of its life when it's 12 to 20 days old the bee starts doing chores around the hive it produces wax stores pollen and nectar builds the comb guards the entrance and so on when the bee turns 20 days old it becomes a forager it looks for and delivers pollen nectar and tree resin to make propolis the bee also brings water bees needed for drinking and cooling the hive at one point do you see something that looks like a hospital room there worker bees look after those that feel unwell the doctors bring them different types of honey depending on their infection if there's no other way they remove a sick bee from the hive it helps to prevent the entire colony from getting in and then there are also temperature control bees the temperature in the hive is usually around 95 degrees fahrenheit it's crucial to keep it this way not hotter not colder otherwise the eggs won't hatch you see a group of bees and instantly understand their temperature bees apparently the temperature in the hive has dropped and now the bees are trying to warm it up they're vibrating in a special way which raises their body temperature and you can feel the air around you become a bit warmer and if they needed to cool the hive they would go and gather some water droplets then they would bring this water on their backs once in a hive the temperature bees would buzz their wings very fast making the water evaporate and lower the temperature you move further and soon come across a bee you haven't seen before it has huge eyes a large body and no stinger it's a drone the only kind of male bee in the hive drones don't have any foraging tools either their only purpose is to mate with the queen and care for her the drone's life isn't too long for one thing if this bee manages to mate with the queen it never survives the process and if there's a food shortage or winter is coming worker bees usually kick drones out of the hive and don't let them back in wow that's hard you keep going until you finally notice a nursery there you spot a bee that is twice the size of a worker bee your quest has come to an end that's the queen this bee is the most important one for the hive because it's the only bee that can lay eggs despite her title the queen doesn't actually rule and her brain is smaller than that of a worker bee but she produces special pheromones that influence the mood of the entire hive the queen also gives birth to every single bee in the colony when the queen is still a larva worker bees feed her royal jolly that's a goop with super high sugar content a larger cell along with such a diet leads to a bigger body and the future queen's ability to emit the pheromones when the queen has mated with drones she returns to the hive three days later she starts laying eggs and never stops she works especially hard in the spring laying one egg every 20 seconds no wonder that later in the year the colony already has a population of thirty thousand to sixty thousand bees but wait something strange is happening here a group of worker bees in fact lots of them might be half the colony leave the hive with the queen leading them it means the colony has become too big the queen goes outside for the first time since mating and the whole swarm sets off in search of a new home back in the hive a new queen hatches from an egg eight days later

Channel: BRIGHT SIDE

Views: 2,936,939

Keywords: bright side, brightside, bright side videos, inside a beehive, bee for a day, animal facts, wild animals, facts about animals, facts about insects, facts about honey bees, animal facts videos, facts about animals bright side, amazing facts about animals, best facts about animals, cool facts about animals, short facts about animals, weirdest animals, strangest animals, most bizarre animals, how bees make honey, how bees live in colonies, how bees communicate, queen bee

Id: cIwSy1N9BvQ

Length: 8min 2sec (482 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 15 2021