Answer:
Bees aren’t as busy as you think. In fact, some are quite lazy.
Photograph by Thinkstock.
New York has witnessed an uptick in honeybee swarms this spring, reversing a long decline in the honeybee population and keeping the NYPD’s bee expert very busy. How busy are bees, really?
They’re pretty industrious but not as busy as some other animals. A honeybee might work anywhere from just a few hours a day to about 12, depending on its role in the beehive. For example, worker bees tasked with the daily foraging of nectar or pollen generally spend nearly every hour of daylight outside—but as soon as it gets dark they get to head back to the nest and relax. (Honeybees don’t sleep the same way that humans do—they don’t have eyelids, for one—but they do stop moving, relax their muscles, and let their antennae gradually slump.) Worker bees whose duties lie within the nest don’t have it easy, either—they stay a little busy around the clock, tending to the honeycombs, fanning their wings to keep the nest cool, but they do take frequent breaks. Queens are also busy, if relatively immobile, laying more than 1,000 eggs each day. Drones, by contrast, are quite lazy. They don’t leave the hive until early afternoon, at which time they carouse around in packs, and when they get home just a few hours later, they rely on the worker bees to feed them.
