500 eggs 41 day. The infant bees ernerge, just as many older worker bees die, having shredded their wings to 5 pieces in foraging flighis. The life span of a worker is four to six weeks. The queen will live up to four or five years. These are the iniricate stages of a honeybee's career. First, maggotlike larvae hatch from the eggs laid 10 in the hexagonal cells of the hive by the queen. Young workers of five days of age or more who have been feeding heavily on pollen produce t.or the larvae a pro- tein-rich substance called bee milk or royal jelly. The Idfvlie grow to five hundred times their original weighi. 15 Tn six days, when their bodies have swollen to fill their cells Lompletely. they spin silk cocoons about them- selves. Older workers cap the cells With a fine, light wax. The new bee miraculously evolves, translucent and perfect, and on the twelfth day after the capping 20 chews her way out through the lid of her cell. The bees now begin to tnake their first excursions outside, short flights to familiarize themselves with the territory. Some are respon%ible for clearing refuse from the hive; they carry the corpses of other bees a distance 70 from the hive and drop them to the ground. Others guard the entrance to Ihe hive; they use their stingers to atlack intruders, illcluding holley-stealing bees from other hives. In the final period of a worker bee's life. from 75 about the iwentieth day until her death, she bLcomes a forager. colleciing water, resin, nectar, or pollen. Her body is ingeniously shaped for the work. Her inner back legs are covered with bristly brushes that mesh logether on opposite legs. The bee brushes away pollen 80 from a flower's ihickly coated %t4imens, then forces the pollen through ihe Stiff hairs of one leg with the bristles of the leg opposite, as though combing or sifting it. On the outer side of her back legs are deep indentations alled-pollen baskets. She moistens the pollen with 85 honey that she has brought from the hive in her honey stomach. She forrns the pollen into a ball, like bread dough. packs it into her pollen baskets, then flie5 b<ick to the hive with bright bulbs of pollen bulging from her legs. For the first three days of life the young bee walks around the brood comb, licking clean the newly emp- tied cells and polishing them with her saliva. Only if a cell has been prep<ired this way will the queen lower 25 her abdomen inlo it lind lay an egg. After three days, the hypopharyngeal glands in the young bee's head have fully developed, and she becomes a nurse. She begins by feeding the older, bigger larvae. but as she becomes more skilled she feeds the younger, more delA- 30 cate larvae with bee milk from her mouth. At the end of ten days the glands on the head of ihe nurse begin to shrink; she can no longer produce royal jelly. The four pairs of wax glands on her lower abdomen have now reached their full size, and she 35 begins to secrete wax. The wax forms in scales and slides ou( fr()m the underside of her (ibdomen. In the warmer months, when the population of the hive swells, the wax-producing bees begin to build layers of new comb. They gorge themselves on honey and secrete 40 immense quantities of wax (consuming six to eight pound% of honey to produce one pound of wax). Workers roll the wax up away from their abdomens with their legs, and chew and soften it with saliva. With their mouths and feet they manipulale ihe wax to fonn 45 the mathematically precise sheets of fragile hexagonal cells th4lt honeybees have routinely created for millions of ye(irs.
