Honeybee eggs

Posted by Jon on Jul 10, 2010 in Bee behaviour, Beekeeping | 0 comments

During a hive inspection, one of the things beekeepers check for is the presence of healthy eggs as this shows that the queen is in residence and is doing her job, and the next generation of honeybees are on their way. The eggs should be laid in the centre at the bottom in adjoining cells – gaps or random laying may indicate that the queen is getting old or there are some issues in the colony.

A couple of days ago (when it was cooler!) I inspected one of the colonies I had cut out here. I hadn’t opened the hive since putting the colony in but I wanted to check that I had definitely got the queen and that all was well whilst there was time to sort anything out before winter. I was delighted to see that the queen had been hard at work, laying eggs in the comb in a regular pattern.

To me, the queen’s role is fascinating. She alone manages the balance of the hive by providing the right ratios of workers and drones. By allowing fertilisation of the majority of the eggs as she lays them (using the sperm stored from her mating flight) she produces female eggs which will grow into workers unless selected to become queens. By not fertilising others eggs, she produces males (with only one set of chromosomes) which will become drones.

She lays the eggs into comb that has been cleared out by workers and the egg is attached by a small mucous string to the base of the cell (this will be the back end of the larva when it hatches). The white sausage-like eggs are visible to the naked eye being about 1.5mm in length. The form of the larva is visible by day 3 in the egg and it hatches soon after by tearing the membrane through contracting it’s muscles and gently weaving. There’s a good description of the whole process here.

Here you can see the workers tending the cells and the eggs in situ…