Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow. The honeybee includes a group of insects that in a broad sense comprises all bees that make...
Question 1 Report
Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.
The honeybee includes a group of insects that in a broad sense comprises all bees that make honey. They are social insects and live together in hives. The honeybee is remarkable for the dancing movement it performs in the hive to communicate information to its fellow bees about the location, distance, size, and quality of a particular food source in the surrounding area. There are two honeybee sexes, male and female, and two female castes. The two female castes are known as workers and queens. The males, or drones, are larger than the workers and are present only for about eight weeks, in early summer. The workers and queen have stingers, whereas the drones are stingless. The queens' unfertilised eggs develop into drones, whereas fertilised eggs develop into females, which may be either workers or virgin queens. Eggs destined to become queens are deposited in queen cells. After hatching, the virgin queens are fed royal jelly. When not fed a diet consisting solely of royal jelly, virgin queens will develop into workers.
Adapted from Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopedia (2020, March 24), honeybee. Encyclopedia Britannica.
Which of the honeybees does not live long?
Answer Details
The drones are the honeybees that do not live long. Drone bees are male bees whose primary role is to mate with a queen bee. They do not participate in foraging for food or taking care of the hive. Once they have completed their mating role, they typically die shortly thereafter because mating is a fatal act for them.
In addition, if drones have not mated by the end of the mating season, they are often expelled from the hive by the worker bees. This is primarily because drones do not contribute to the hive's upkeep, and during times when resources are scarce, it is not beneficial for the colony to support them. Therefore, drones generally have a shorter lifespan compared to the queen and worker bees in the hive.
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