A question on male and female bees?
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Berclair School, Bee County, Texas. In an open field in front of the Berclair Mansion sits an abandoned schoolhouse, filled with faded and broken memories of decades past.
If there is one thing I have learned about Texas, it’s that Texas is filled with abandoned schoolhouses. I’ve run across all sorts of schools all over south Texas – from one-room shanties in the hills of Payton’s Colony or the desert plains of Comstock; to boarded up structures in Gillett and Quihi; to huge half-destroyed high schools in Asherton and Catarina. So it was no surprise to run across an abandoned school in Berclair.
The town of Berclair sprang up in the 1890’s when the railroad was built across the Coastal Bend. While it did serve the local ranchers, Berclair never really exploded, topping out at just 350 residents at its largest. Then the Great Depression hit, and like many small Texas towns, it never really recovered – dropping down to sixty to seventy residents until recently.
I have no idea of exactly when this little schoolhouse closed its doors, but it looks like it must have been at least a few decades ago. Inside, I did find a reunion sign for the Class of 1948. Now the building is filled with some junk scattered around the floor, plus it looks like has been used for storage for various community organizations at one time or another.
The front door opens up into a single central hallway that leads to another door at the rear. The entire left side of the building is one large room, which could be divided into two classrooms, and a raised section towards the rear that can serve as a stage. Off to the right, two smaller rooms filled with trash. A stairway heads to the rafters and attic, doubling as a storage area. In back, separated from the main building are the restrooms.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any information at all about this school online. Although the schoolhouse was open to the elements with trash and some graffiti, it appears it has been cleaned up in the past (for class reunions, for example), and will no doubt be fixed up again in the future. Pictures taken March 7, 2009.
Question by Science Guy: A question on male and female bees?
Hi,
I was reading a wikipedia article on Queen bees and it says : “The queen lays a fertilized (female) or unfertilized (male) egg according to the width of the cell. Drones are raised in cells that are significantly larger than the cells used for workers. The queen fertilizes the egg by selectively releasing sperm from her spermatheca as the egg passes through her oviduct.”
How can she lay an unfertilized egg? Do unfertilized eggs grow into males?
Also, I was reading that the female workers do all of the work and that males are pretty much useless in terms of the hive. So..if there are 50% female workers and 50% male drones, what do all the extra drones do? How does the queen choose which males to mate with?
Or can the Queen choose/limit the number of males born?
link to wikipedia article, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_bee#Daily_life_for_the_queen
Thanks
What do you think? Answer below!
One Response to A question on male and female bees?
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Soon after a queen is hatched, she goes on her maiden flight. She goes to a male gathering spot and mates with up to 20 drones. The males each die as they mate with the queen. The queen flies back to the hive and begins laying eggs. There are three size chambers in a next when preparing for a new queen.
The smallest chambers are for female workers. When she lays an egg, she squirts her saved sperm in and the fertilized egg produces a female. Any female can become a queen if the hive so decides.
If she wants to produce a male she withholds the sperm and male is produced. When the queen runs out of sperm, sometimes up 10 years, she can only produce unfertilized eggs. She becomes known as a drone layer. Time to replace her.
The workers feed all larva “Royal Jelly” for the first 72 hours. Then they stop feeding them any more “royal Jelly” except the female(s) that they want to become queens. They build special cells that look like peanuts that lay on their sides. The bees can sense when the queen becomes a drone layer and raises a new Queen(s). If they miss there opportunity to raise a new queen after the old one dies, any female can become a pseudo queen. Because her female parts can’t mate she can only lay unfertilized eggs, thus can produce only males. As a rule the hive keeps about 20% of the hive as drones.
Only recently has the value of the drone bee become recognized in the salvation of the genes of the hives. When the queen dies, the genes die unless they can be transferred out to new queen. That’s why only males are then produced.
What else do the drones do? They can move from hive to hive without a fuss. No matter where they are , they can’t feed themselves. They don’t do anything to support the hive like the workers. Their only duty is to carry on the genes. Remember, they give their life even as they are mating.
The males have no stingers. As winter approaches they are driven from the hive to starve and and freeze. The queen will produce males along with the females about the time of the spring equinox..That way new workers and drones will be ready for the next spring season. None of the females survive the winter that entered the hive in the fall either.. Only the queen makes it from year to year.
On the mating? If the queen happen to be bred from one of the drones from her own hive, the workers can smell it. They destroy and eat the eggs to prohibit inbreeding and keep the genes uncluttered everything? If not, ask and I’ll edit some more into the answer.
texter
May 23, 2012 at 2:24 pm