Colony cycle The colony of
Apis cerana, a typical
honey bee, consists of several thousand female worker bees, one queen bee, and several hundred male drone bees. The colony is constructed inside beeswax combs inside a tree cavity, with a special peanut-shaped structure on the margins of the combs where the queens are reared. The colony's annual cycle in cold temperature regions begins shortly after the winter solstice, when the colony raises the core temperature of its cluster to about 34 degrees Celsius and starts to rear brood. At first, only around 100 bees are produced, but several thousand bees are developing by early spring. By late spring, the colony will have already attained full size, and will begin to reproduce. The colony then rears several new queens, and divides itself with about half the workers plus the old queen once the new queens have nearly matured. This new swarm then flies to a new tree branch, explores nest cavities, and then directs the other bees to the new site once satisfied with the location. During the remainder of summer and into the fall, the colonies in the new locations build combs, rear brood, and gather food to quickly rebuild their populations and food reserves prior to the arrival of winter.
Division of labor As a social species,
Apis cerana colonies contain divisions of labor depending on what each member of the group is specialized to perform. There is generally only one queen bee whose sole responsibility it is to lay eggs; therefore, she is the mother of all the workers present in the colony. Apart from the queen bee, the remaining female bees are known as the worker bees, as these individuals perform all the tasks necessarily to maintain the hive including tending to the eggs, larvae, and pupae, foraging for food and water, cleaning the beehive and producing honey. These tasks are divided among the female worker bees by a factor of age. The remaining individuals are the males, known as the "drones," whose only responsibility is to mate with a queen from another colony; therefore, drones are solely produced during the reproductive season.
Communication The principal method of communication is the
waggle dance, performed primarily when a worker bee discovers a rich source of
pollen or
nectar and wishes to share this knowledge with her fellow nest-mates. The
waggle dance occurs deep inside the colony's hive, where the worker bee performs a brief reenactment of the recent journey to a patch of flowers. Neighboring bees observe and learn this dance and can then follow the same pattern, utilizing the odor of the flowers to fly in a certain path and arrive at the same destination. The bees following the informed worker bee will extend their
antennae towards the dancer in order to detect the dance sounds, as the frequency of the bee's antennae closely matches the
vibration frequency of its wings. The overall direction and duration of each waggle is closely correlated with the direction and distance from the flower patch being described.
Mating behavior Within the
honey bee colony, a queen bee typically mates with 10 or more males. This extensive mating is performed in an effort to secure a great range of genetic variation in her colony to cope with diseases, as well as respond to nectar sources and a wide range of external stimuli. Apart from the queen bee, the only other sexual members of the society are the male drones, whose only function is to mate with the queen, after which they will die. The exact time and place of
Apis cerana mating is specific to the subspecies, often varying by local environment. For instance, in
Sri Lanka,
Apis cerana males typically aggregate beside a tree canopy as opposed to above a tree as is found in the
Apis cerana subspecies of
Japan. The most significant factor in determining mating time, however, is not ecological conditions, but rather the presence of drones of other species. Mating time decreases as the number of non-species drones present increases.
Reproductive swarming In
A. cerana, reproductive swarming is similar to
A. mellifera.
A. cerana reproductive swarms settle 20–30 m away from the natal nest (the mother or primary colony) and stay for a few days before departing for a new nest site after getting information from scout bees. Scout bees search for suitable cavities in which to construct the swarm's home. Successful scouts come back and report the location of suitable nesting sites to the other bees by performing communication dances on the surface of the swarm cluster in the same way as for food sources.
Absconding behavior A. cerana has migration and absconding behavior, abandoning the current nest and building a new nest in a new location where an abundant supply of nectar and pollen is available. These bees usually do not store great amounts of honey, so they are more vulnerable to starvation if a prolonged shortage of nectar and pollen occurs. Absconding will start when not enough pollen and nectar are available. After the last brood emerges, the adult bees fill their honey stomachs from the hive's stores and swarm to establish a new nest at a new location.
A. cerana has more absconding behavior than
A. mellifera. ==Life history==