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Any novice beekeeper, wanting to delve into all the nuances of bee breeding, one way or another is faced with a large number of processes and terms that at first may seem complicated. These include drone brood, which is called one of the mysteries of honey bees, the study of which is an important component of the experience of every beekeeper.
What is brood, its importance in beekeeping
Like many insects, bees go through a certain developmental stage before becoming adults. In general terms, brood is the totality of all the offspring of a bee family, which is also called “babies.”
Since the development of a bee colony has its own patterns, by the appearance and number of children in the hive one can draw a conclusion about the state of the swarm, its health and functionality. Large brood invariably leads to the appearance of young worker bees, which means an increase in honey yield.
Bees are very organized creatures that not only carry out their clearly assigned tasks in the hive, but also have strictly designated areas both for children of different species and for the products of their vital activity. As you can see in the photo, the bees' brood is usually located in the center, while the food is located at the edges.
In addition, frames with brood, unlike frames with food, have a more convex and rough structure.
What does bee brood look like?
Externally, bee brood is a waxy cell that contains baby bees at different stages of growth. Depending on these stages, it can be open or closed.
Open brood is considered to be in unclogged cells where there are already bee larvae. As a rule, larvae emerge from eggs on the third day and look like transparent worms without legs or wings. At this stage, worker bees feed the babies with bee milk, beebread and honey in different proportions - until the larvae enter the pupal phase. The photo below shows an open brood of bees.
As soon as the baby begins to pupate, the worker bees stop feeding it and seal the cell with a porous wax cap. From this moment on, the bees' brood is called printed.
Despite the calibrated dynamics that exist in the bee family, it rarely happens that all the children in the hive develop synchronously. Due to changes in temperature and humidity or past diseases, some of the offspring may die, and then the queen lays new eggs in unoccupied cells. This leads to the appearance of children in the family in sealed and open cells at the same time - the so-called “variegated brood”.
Photos of bees' brood by day
Regardless of the breed of bees and their role in the hive, the stages of brood formation can be summarized in the following table:
Stage of development | Duration in days | ||
| Uterus | Working bee | Drone |
Egg
| 3 | 3 | 3 |
Larva
| 5 | 6 | 7 |
Prepupa
| 2 | 3 | 4 |
Doll
| 6 | 9 | 10 |
How to find out daily brood
Having studied the hierarchy of bees, we can conclude that in this complexly organized community, all the actions of the members of the hive, from the worker bee to the queen, are subject to a certain algorithm, which is regularly repeated in a healthy family. Therefore, it will not be difficult for an experienced beekeeper to determine the age of children of any type with an accuracy of up to a day.
So, when the queen lays eggs - scarlet - she places the offspring at the bottom of the honeycomb, one egg in each cell. One-day brood of bees is located vertically in the cell, as in the photo, but as it develops it acquires a horizontal position by the time the larva emerges from it.
On what day do bees seal their brood?
Bee larvae immediately after hatching from the egg begin to feed intensively under the supervision of working insects. Moreover, the type of food for children directly depends on their future role in the family. By the end of the third day, the babies increase significantly in size. Then the worker bees stop feeding the open brood and seal the entrance to the cell to complete the process of turning the baby into an adult.
When is the last brood of bees released in the fall?
In healthy communities of bees with a functional queen no older than 2 years, babies appear starting in the spring, after insects emerge from wintering, and until the end of summer. The last brood comes out, as a rule, at the end of August - beginning of September. By this time, they usually stop feeding the bees for the winter and move on to cleaning the nests.
Types of bee brood
Depending on the type of eggs sown by the queen in the honeycomb, bee brood is divided into 2 types:
- worker bees;
- drone
Since worker bees make up the bulk of the colony, their brood accounts for most of the comb. A worker bee emerges from eggs fertilized by drones; it takes 21 days to complete its development cycle from baby to adult.
Drone brood is baby bees that will later grow into male bees, called drones. Their developmental stages are similar to those of worker bees, but take longer - 24 days in total. In addition, they hatch from an unfertilized seed. Drones have no other function other than fertilizing the uterus. Below is a photo of drone brood.
How many days does it take for printed brood to emerge?
As can be seen from the diagram above, the release of printed brood, and, consequently, the transformation of a baby into an adult insect, is associated with the role of the bee in the community. Thus, queens need only 6 days for complete metamorphosis from a pupa to a mature individual - this is the shortest cycle. Worker bees require a little more time - 9 days. Drones undergo the longest transformation: 10 full days.
Brood diseases
With insufficient care, a swarm of bees can be exposed to various diseases, which in most cases affect the bee offspring. Among the most common diseases are:
- Sacbrood – a viral infectious disease that affects 3-day-old larvae. The virus enters hives from wild bees and bee pests and is transmitted through infected beekeeper equipment. Symptoms include dulling of the baby's color and gradual darkening of the head. Then the bee larvae turn completely black and dry out.When such a diagnosis is made, the affected honeycombs and babies are destroyed, and the queen is removed from the bee colony for 1 week to stop egg laying. Beehives, honeycombs with feed honey, equipment and other things that have been in contact with an infected swarm are disinfected. The swarm of bees themselves is treated with a 3% solution of potassium permanganate in a ratio of 100 ml per 1 frame.Important! Potassium permanganate should not fall on open brood, otherwise some of the babies will die.
- Lime brood, or axospherosis, is a contagious disease caused by spores of a mold species of fungi. During the course of the disease, the body of the baby bee begins to become moldy, become shiny, acquires a dirty white color and hardens. After this, the fungus takes over the entire space of the honeycomb, mummifying the larva. If symptoms of the disease are detected, honeycombs with sick offspring are sent to a veterinary laboratory. Infected honeycombs and dead bees are removed from diseased colonies. The nest is cleaned, insulated and ventilated. For treatment, antibiotics nystatin and griseofulvin are used (500,000 OD per 1 liter of sugar syrup) - 100 g per 1 frame, 1 time in 5 days. The general course of treatment is 15 days.
- Stone brood, or aspergillosis, is an infectious disease that affects children and adult bees. It is caused by two types of mold fungi of the genus Aspergillus: black and yellow. When a honeycomb becomes infected, the larvae and bees become covered in fluffy mold of the appropriate color. Treatment is carried out in the same way as for axospherosis.
In addition to the above ailments, lattice and humpback brood are also distinguished. They are not classified as diseases, but as violations of the vital functions of individual hives, which can be corrected with due diligence.
Thus, lattice brood occurs for a number of reasons, the most common of which is the presence of a sick or old queen, which does not so densely sow the comb with eggs. This leaves unevenly spaced empty cells. The problem is solved by replacing the uterus with a younger one.
Humpback brood requires more detailed consideration due to its specificity.
What is “humpbacked brood” in bees?
This is a phenomenon in which the queen bee lays drone eggs in egg cells from which worker bees subsequently hatch. Such cells are small in size and are unable to accommodate the entire male bee pupa, which is why, when sealed, the lid takes on a curved shape, as if forming a hump. Male bees emerge from the affected cells deformed and small compared to healthy drones.
From time to time, such brood can be seen in small quantities in full-fledged functional queens, most often in early spring. As a rule, soon the life of the colony returns to normal, and the children begin to develop normally.
But if the trend is prolonged, this is a sign that the queen for some reason has lost the ability to lay eggs or has died. Then, after about 2 weeks, some of the worker bees acquire the ability to lay eggs. However, unlike the queen, they can only worm from drone brood, which is why they are called tinder bees.In addition, the polypores cannot distinguish drone combs from worker bee breeding cells, which is why humpback brood is formed.
Humpbacked brood in bees can be identified by the following signs:
- honeycombs in open brood are smaller than the larvae in them;
- closed brood has a convex surface;
- there are several eggs in one cell;
- the eggs are located not on the bottom, but on the walls of the cells.
How to fix humpback brood in bees
There are several ways to eliminate this anomaly, which depend on the size of the bee family and the season when the violation occurred.
Thus, it would be wiser to disband a small swarm of bees (up to 6 frames) or move them to a larger colony for the winter.
In the case of large communities, you need to proceed according to the following scheme:
- Move 1 - 2 frames with masonry from a strong swarm.
- Transplant the queen with several bees from there, which will speed up her adaptation.
- Remove the humpback brood from the frames and return them to the hive.
Many beekeepers use a different method:
- Frames with damaged brood are taken some distance from the hive and the babies are shaken out, thoroughly cleaning the combs.
- Then they replace the old hive with a new one. After some time, a swarm of bees will settle in an unusual place, leaving the flightless drone queens outside.
What to do if there is no brood in the hive
Often, novice beekeepers are faced with a situation where there seem to be no signs of disease, but there is no brood in the hive. This can happen for several reasons:
- the uterus died;
- the uterus has weakened or become too old to continue laying eggs;
- There is not enough food for bees in the hive.
In the first case, it is enough to transfer a family of bees to another swarm in which there is a queen, or to transfer a young fertile queen to a queenless family. With this method, it is better to use a special cage: this will help the queen adapt to a change in environment and will protect her if the bees react aggressively to the new family member.
If there is a queen in the hive, but she is not worming and there is no brood, this may be due to her age. As a rule, queens retain the ability to lay eggs for 2 years, but in multi-level hives, where the load is many times higher, queens must be replaced annually.
If there is no brood in August, this may be due to the early transition of the bee colony to winter mode. Usually it occurs in early September: then the last babies emerge from the sealed honeycombs. However, the beginning of wintering may shift to mid-August if there is not enough food in the hive to feed the brood. To solve this problem, it is enough to feed the swarm with syrup - and then the queen will return to her duties.
The value of brood for humans
In addition to its undoubted value directly for beekeepers, bee brood is also of interest to people who are very far from beekeeping
So, some African tribes regularly eat it. Despite the fact that this dish is extremely exotic, it is a rich source of protein and its content can compete with meat.In addition, it contains a huge amount of vitamin D and various mineral compounds, including calcium, phosphorus, copper, zinc and sodium. It also contains more than 30 amino acids, which are involved in all processes of the human body and strengthen the immune system.
Often, bee babies and other bee products are used in apitherapy to treat disorders of the endocrine and prostate glands, female and male infertility, and to alleviate the symptoms of menopause.
Larval jelly has proven its benefits in cosmetology. It is included in anti-aging masks and creams due to its rejuvenating properties.
Conclusion
Both bee and drone brood are of great importance. For beekeepers, it serves as an indicator of the health and proper functioning of the bee colony, while the common man will appreciate its medicinal and cosmetic properties.
