Sometimes I think we make things too complicated.  The life span of  
honeybees is one.  Let’s start with the larva.  They are fed a  
combination of honey, pollen and royal jelly except for the queen,  
which is fed 100% royal jelly.  This royal jelly is a mix of vitamins,  
minerals and proteins secreted from the hypopharyngeal gland in the  
bees head and is obtained from flowers that produce nectar and  
pollen.  Larva that is destined to be a worker or a drone is only fed  
half rations of royal jelly.

The queen is then fed a steady diet of royal jelly.  This how she is  
able to lay a thousand eggs a day or what ever number you choose.  It  
is a lot to ask of an insect to do this.  Keep in mind that this is  
due to the fact that her diet is the best that the nurse bees can  
provide.  The fact that a fertilized larva can turn into a queen is  
testament to what a good diet can do.

I have often heard the phrase that the “bees make nice fat bees to  
live through the winter.”  I don’t see how you can make fat bees with  
an exoskeleton.  Bees that eat too much turn it into a fatty acid  
named beeswax.  I believe that during the late fall or early winter  
when the bees stop raising young bees, the glands in the bees head  
that produce the royal jelly continue to function, but rather than use  
the royal jelly to feed larva the royal jelly is absorbed by the bees  
allowing them to live longer.

There is not magic here.  The bees eat honey and pollen only.  There  
is a great lesson here to be learned about our own eating habits.  If  
we worked as hard as worker bees we would not live very long either.   
We would wear out working from sun up to sun down during the nectar  
flow.  Another reason why bees live longer in the winter is because  
they are not doing much work.

IMHO

Bill Bartlett
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