Honey bee Queens can live for about 3 years. Workers vary. Winter workers have shorter lifespans due to high activity, while the winter bees which just need to be fat and huddle together in the hive to prevent all the bees from freezing to death can live for about 6 months. As the queen gets older and stops laying as much, the workers will eventually kill her and allow one of that season’s new queens to replace her.
This hive us huge though. No one queen could support a hive if 5.5 million so I’m guessing this must actually be a number of hives in close proximity.
Honey bee Queens can live for about 3 years. Workers vary. Winter workers have shorter lifespans due to high activity, while the winter bees which just need to be fat and huddle together in the hive to prevent all the bees from freezing to death can live for about 6 months. As the queen gets older and stops laying as much, the workers will eventually kill her and allow one of that season’s new queens to replace her.
This hive us huge though. No one queen could support a hive if 5.5 million so I’m guessing this must actually be a number of hives in close proximity.
I used to keep bees. Fucking stressful stuff.
It’s not a hive, those mining bees (andrena regularis) are solitary and all the females can lay eggs. It’s just a big population of them.
Oh cool