Longevity

© Agroscope

We are often asked how long individual honey bees live. Summer bees live for 3 to 6 weeks, whilst winter bees can live from 3 to 6 months. This adaptation to life in a temperate climate is key to the survival of the colony over the long winters, during which foraging, and hence the rearing of new generations of workers, is impossible.

So what are the physiological mechanisms responsible for this difference in longevity? To fill in the gaps in our knowledge on this subject, the lifespan of worker bees in colonies was studied in relation to colony size and the hatching of young bees. Colony size has no influence on the average lifespan of bees. It is well known that brood-rearing activity shortens the lifespan of bees, but we propose a model for regulating worker longevity in which the replacement of workers by young bees also exerts a regulatory effect on worker lifespan.