MCQ
Q.
Which one of the following statements is true for the honeybees and beehives?
Correct Answer: B
The correct option is Most of the bees in the hive are worker bees.
- Every honey bee colony comprises a single queen, a few hundred drones and several thousand worker castes of honey bees.
- A queen bee is the only female bee in the hive that gets to reproduce.
- Worker bees are all female and are all offspring of the queen.
- Queen is a fertile, functional female, the worker is a sterile female and the drone is a male insect.
- Queen and worker develop from the fertilized egg while drone develops from an unfertilized egg.
- Further differentiation of queen and worker depends on the quality and quantity of food that is fed to the queen or worker larvae.
Explanation:
Every beehive has one male bee and many female bees → Inorrect.
Most of the bees in the hive are worker bees → Correct
The study of honey bee is sericulture → Inorrect.
Beehives are octagonal in shapes→ Incorrect. (Hexagonal)
| Apiculture | Study of the Honey bee. |
| Vermiculture | Agriculture of Earthworm. |
| Tissue culture | Production of a new plant from plant cells. |
| Sericulture | Rearing of a silkworm. |
| Mariculture | Production of mulberry |
| Viticulture | Production of graphes. |
| Silviculture | Forst Development |
Additional Information
The queen:
- There is only one queen in a colony and considerably larger than the members of other castes.
- Swarming is the natural method that honeybee colonies use for multiplying their colonies.
- The old queen is killed as soon as the new queen is fertilized.
- The phenomenon of raising a queen in the off-season is called supersedure.
- The normal lifespan of a queen is 3 years.
The drone:
- The drones are male bees with no sting.
- They are much larger and stouter than either the queen or the workers.
- Their only function is to impregnate the young queen a task which they are unable to perform until they are about 10 days of age.
- They also help in the maintenance of hive temperature.
- The drones are produced by unfertilized eggs of the queen, or by those workers which take up the reproductive function due to the absence of a queen in a colony.
- The normal lifespan of a drone is 57 days.
The worker:
- Smallest inhabitants of the beehive.
- They are imperfect females incapable of laying eggs.
- Worker bees primary duties are cleaning, feeding developing larva once hypopharyngeal glands develop, ripening of honey, secreting/moulding of wax into combs.
- The lifespan of a worker is about 4 weeks during the active season and 8 to 10 weeks during the less active season.
- On certain occasions when the colony is in need of a queen, some of the workers start laying eggs from which only drones are produced.
- These workers called laying workers.
