The Social Organization of Honey Bee ( Apis Indica) in India

# 1
The Honey Bees are referred to as Eusocial animal in India, as well as in the whole world, as they show a high graded social organization which was evolved before the existence and coming of the Homo sapiens sapiens. The Indian honey bees are biologically known as Apis indica.

# 2
They show well organized divisions of labour as well as other contrivances required for their specific ecological niche. A typical well built bee colony consists of near about 45 thousands individuals in India, which has primarily three different castes, called, Drone, queen and Worker.

# 3
Workers are the smallest among the all castes but are most important labour caste because they play the key role for everything in a hive except production of offsprings. They are diploid sterile females.
Workers may be categorized into different castes depending on their type of working.
The workers those bring nectar known as nectar collector bees, those defend the hive from external enemies called soldier bees, those keep the combs clean are called hive cleaner bees etc.
Nectar is gathered by sucking mouth parts-modified maxillae and labium.
Worker bees have different structures in their bodies for adaptation to the labour habits.

These are as follows:
1. A sting (modified ovipositor) with poison gland for defense purpose.

2. Long proboscis to suck the nectar.

3. Strong chitinized wings for fanning.

4. Pollen basket in their tibia of the hind limbs for keeping the collected pollen grains.

5. Wax gland for the secretion of Wax.

# 4
Drones are the only male member of the bee colony. They are produced from unfertilized eggs i.e. without the help of male gametes, so they are haploid. Their development is called Parthenogenesis, more specifically arrhenotoky. The only help to break the virginity of the queen after nuptial flight. In a hive generally 3 to 5 drones are present. Drones do not have any sting or poison gland.

# 5
Queen is the fertile diploid female member having a royal look and specialized for their long tapering abdomen. They have short legs and wings. They lay eggs returning back to the hive after a nuptial flight. They neither have wax gland nor the poison apparatus.

# 6
The hive and the comb are totally formed by the worker bees only. A comb is a vertical sheet of wax made up of a double layer of several hexagonal cells projecting in both directions from central wax sheet. The wax secreted by the wax glands present at the 4^th abdominal segments of the workers, the melting point of which is 140° F. In India, each bee hive has near about thousands of thin wall cells in the upper zone of which is filled with pollens and honey, called storage cells. In the largest cells queen resides and second larger cells are built for drones. In the smaller cells (maximum in number) workers stay and in the lower parts of the hive broods are reared.

# 7
There are two types of communication dances performed by the workers. When one worker bee finds a source of nectar, it immediately signals by performing certain rhythmatic movements and spread odours those are caught by other bees. When the source of nectar is very close to the hive then they perform a round dance turning in a circle, once to left then to right and repeating this for several minutes in a particular site. When the source is very far from the hive then they perform tail-wagging dance. It runs towards the direction straight before for a short distance, wagging their abdomens after making a 360° turn towards left, run ahead once again and turns right. These types of dances are noticed by the other bees and they fly to the source of the nectar.