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A worker bee is any female bee that lacks the reproductive capacity of the colony's queen bee and carries out the majority of tasks needed for the functioning of the hive. While worker bees are present in all eusocial bee species, the term is rarely used (outside of scientific literature) for bees other than honey bees , particularly the ...
The queen bee is the only fertile female in the hive; if she dies without the possibility of a viable replacement queen, it is not uncommon for the worker bees to lay eggs. This is a result of the lack of the queen's pheromones and the pheromones secreted by uncapped brood, which normally suppress ovarian development in workers. Worker bees are ...
However, despite the shortcomings of the haplodiploidy hypothesis, it is still considered to have some importance. For example, many bees have female-biased sex ratios and/or invest less in or kill males. Analysis has shown that in Hymenoptera, the ancestral female was monogamous in each of the eight independent cases where eusociality evolved. [2]
While there is no difference in external anatomy of queen bees to worker bees, during the pupal phase queen bee reproductive organs develop where the worker bee reproductive organs do not. [8] In the female worker bees, the ovarioles are prearranged to go through a process of cell death, leaving the worker bees sterile. [9]
The production of female offspring by parthenogenesis is referred to as thelytoky (e.g., aphids) while the production of males by parthenogenesis is referred to as arrhenotoky (e.g., bees). When unfertilized eggs develop into both males and females, the phenomenon is called deuterotoky. [22]
Workers, an entirely female caste, mainly forage for food, defend the colony, and tend to the growing larvae. They are usually sterile for most of the colony cycle and do not raise their own young. Unlike queens and workers, which develop from fertilized diploid eggs, drones, or male bees, are born from unfertilized, haploid eggs. Drones leave ...
Female sand bees become parasitized far more often than males. Stylops-parasitized female sand bees are sterile and express themselves in behavior and appearance rather like their male counterparts of the species. The pollen gathering apparatus is reduced, the abdomen is flatter, and also the coloration is reminiscent of male individuals.
Distribution of honey bees around the world Morphology of a sterile female worker honey bee. Honey bees appear to have their center of origin in South and Southeast Asia (including the Philippines), as all the extant species except Apis mellifera are native to that region.