Honeybee's Life in a Colony

Honeybees cannot live alone. Their body structure and instincts equip them for life in a colony or community, where they have a complex social organization and the various duties are divided among the individuals according to physical fitness and age. An individual worker bee cannot reproduce itself. While it may continue to live if forcibly isolated from its mates, it fails to care for itself adequately, and soon dies. Most insects have the ability to hibernate in winter, but the honeybee seems to have lost this. Since at low temperatures the bee will die, it must have the ability to make its own environment, so far as temperature is concerned. This makes a colony necessary to the bees in winter, so that they may collectively warm each other. Efficiency, if not necessity, demands that the work of the colony be divided, and such a division of labor tends to enhance the need to maintain the colony, the physical structure of the honeybee is further suited for the defense of the entire colony rather than for its own defense. The bee's barbed sting is used only once and is made more effective by the fact that it is left behind in the victim. With the loss of the sting however, the bee dies. This kind of defensive weapon is not of service to the individual, but to the community.