Talk:Worker bee

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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[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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? ~~