Western and Japanese Honeybee live on honey and pollen of flowers.
Western Honeybee gathers propolis and builds its nest with it,but Japanese Honeybee don't.
One nest or hive has only one Queen Bee.
The queen doesn't go out and gather food,but ovulate eggs.She also excretes substance called phelomon and controls other "workers".Without the queen's control,workers can't work in group.Many workers are female,but they cannot ovulate eggs.Their jobs differ by their age.If they have just emerged,they remain inside and clean the nest or hive and transport food to larvae.If they are old workers,they go outside and collect food.
In spring and summer,you can see black male bees with large eyes.Male bees also don't work and fly about loudly in the afternoon.They are taken out of the nest or hive in the autumn.This is characteristic to Western Honeybee.

photo Apis cerana

brood nest	male bee(drone)
warker	queen cell

Swarming -the way to breeding of colony -

When the spring has come,days are long and the temperature gets higher.The queen ovulates more eggs and the hive will be filled with workers.Then they make new queen cell under the hive and the new queen will be born.When she is born,the old queen leaves the hive with half of the whole workers.This is called swarming.
Swarming is a way of increasing the number of colonies.It is importat for preserving the species to increase not only the number of total bees,but also the number of colonies.Swaming is in this sense very important to preserve the species.

After swarming,the swarm makes a cluster outside.Japanese Honeybee makes the cluster under a big branch of a tree or in the loft.Their cluster is different from that of Western Honeybee in shape.
Once they make the cluster,they waits quietly for exproler bees to find a place which is suitable for building a new nest.They are quiet because they swarm after eating enough honey.
If they find a good place,they fly there all in once and build a new nest.

clustered swarm Apis cerana	clustered swarm Apis mellifera

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