Social organization in honey bee

The honey bee colony has highly organised division of labour. The cast system\m involve queen, worker and drones.

Queen

The only fertile female in the hive with long abdomen and a life span of 3 – 5 years. She will lay 2million eggs during her life time. Her primary duty is to lay eggs, and she also producing some pheromones helping colony organisation.

Workers

They are sterile females forming majority of the colony. Their average life span is 120 days. They posses various adaptations to perform the functions of the hive (involve pollen brush, pollen basket, pollen press and the poison gland and sting). They perform various functions of the hive like pollen and nectar collection, nursing larvae, construction of hive, maintenance of hive and defence of the colony.

Drones

They are fertile males in the colony. The drones are haploid organisms they form haploid sperms without meiosis. Their only one function is fertilizing the queen.

The waggle dance

The field bees returning from food source communicate the direction and distance to food source with kind of looping flight and waggling of abdomen known as waggle dance. The dance consists of two overlapping loops and a middle straight flight (in the form of an 8). The direction of straight course of flight between loops communicates direction of food to other bees of hive (with reference to vertical plane of hive and angle to the position of sun). The frequency of waggling of body during this determines distance to the food.