Talk:Worker bee

Worker bee task

Does this breakdown of tasks apply to all species of honey bee? What are the sources? Cayte 23:39, 17 June 2007 (UTC)Cayte

Moving Eggs

"The queen does not usually lay eggs into queen cells; they are moved to queen cells by a worker bee."

I don't believe there is ANY evidence that workers ever move eggs. (Remove, yes, but move, no.) Eggs ARE layed in queen cells by the queen. I have observed in my observation hives and it is generally held that is what happens. Michael Bush (talk) 19:07, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

OK then, how about a citation showing that workers move eggs. I flatly do not believe that they do and have never seen any study that would show they do and, after thousands of hours of watching them in an observation hive, have never seen them do it. Francios Huber and his assistant spent far more hours than I and came to the same conclusion. So if you are going to say that they move eggs, how about a citation to back that up? If there are no protests, I will go ahead and remove this section. Anyone? Michael Bush (talk) 17:19, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

It may be that some people believe workers move eggs as this is what some beekeepers do when raising queens. For non-beekeepers, plastic queen cells are sometimes used to artificialy promote the raising of queens, and a grafting tool or soft bristled brush is used to transfer an egg and some royal jelly froma worker cell to a queen cell. Some more information can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenter_kit —Preceding unsigned comment added by Adrian Dent123.2.173.147 (talk) 03:45, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Worker bee - Female?

What is the gender of worker bee? How to prove that its female? The one and only female in a bee colony is queen bee. it mates with male and lay eggs, but ther worker cannot Noblevmy (talk) 09:07, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Workers have ovaries. Workers can and do lay eggs under the right conditions (under a lack of open brood pheromones). Workers develop from the same eggs as queens (fertilized diploid eggs), so are genetically female even if that is not as overtly expressed as in the queen. Michael Bush (talk) 14:22, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

If a worker bee lays an egg and the queen comes across it, she will kill the egg and will kill the bee that laied it. She can tell it's not hers by the pheromones present on it. *Saw it on Discovery Channel* —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.133.252.10 (talk) 13:17, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

The article says male, but everything else I read says female. Should this be changed, or does someone want to chime in with an argument for why worker bees are Male? ~~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.171.208.27 (talk) 16:57, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

I will go ahead and revert it. If this is wrong please provide the proper references. --Phoenix ICR (talk) 21:18, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Really bad phrasing

Is it just me or is this paragraph:

The barbs on the stinger will not catch on most animals besides mammals and birds. This means that such animals can be stung many times by the same bee.

Phrased really badly?

82.152.34.158 (talk) 13:34, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Worker bee/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

Hi guys, I didn't get a chance to read this page in full, but just from the introduction, I noticed there are some factual errors. In the first few lines, it is stated that "worker bees are bees that can no longer reproduce". This is not at all true. Worker bees are a seperate caste of bees that are not generally required to reproduce at any time in their life cycles, not 'retired' reproducing bees. Workers can occasionally lay eggs, but this only occurs in extreme cases when the hormonal balance of the hive is upset (usually in response to a failing queen) and is by no mean a normal part of a worker's duties. Further down into the introduction, the author lists the gestation times for different stages of bee development. Some of these, the pupal stage most notably, have the incorrect number of days attributed to the, I wanted respond to this because these are fairly major point to have gotten wrong. Perhaps this article should be flagged as having 'information under dispute', or in need of being corrected, just so people reading it will know not to rely entirely on this information since, if the introduction is of any indication, it has a number or important errors. Also, and this isn't quite as important, the introduction is almost entirely devoid of any paragraph structure at all. The author jumps from point to point without any logical progression. He/she also included a number of details that are far too specific to be included in an introduction. Given the poor writing and the high number of errors, this article may need a full rewrite. If anyone else notices other factual errors, please list them here so that whoever decides to correct this page will know which areas require the most work. "Almost all of civilization's food supply (maize is a noteworthy exception) depends greatly on crop pollination by honey bees, whether directly eaten or used as forage crops for animals that produce milk and meat.″ Yes maize is a noteworthy exception but so too are all other staple cereal crops and, from a global perspective, many (most?) livestock production systems. In any case, I think there is no need to discuss this in the context of worker bees. DurioA (talk) 04:23, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Substituted at 21:35, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: BIOL 412 HONORS

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 28 August 2023 and 8 December 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): MillyA1116 (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by MillyA1116 (talk) 19:12, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

Article Edits

I made some edits to the article to add citations, relevant information, delete irrelevant information, and improve the article's balance. MillyA1116 (talk) 00:19, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: BIOL 412 HONORS

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 2 February 2024 and 3 May 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Simone.eloise (article contribs). Peer reviewers: As2460, Ms1904, AshleyMasse.

— Assignment last updated by Cara.begley (talk) 17:40, 10 March 2024 (UTC)