The life of a bee
After a female worker bee hatches and leaves its egg, what comes next is a multifaceted and busy ‘career’ directed by hormonal changes as well as the needs of the hive. In the winter, this career spans several months, but during the summer, all that hard work is compressed into a lifespan of just a single short month, on average, thirty-four days.
First, as soon as they hatch, they specialise in becoming a housekeeper bee. They are trained by slightly older adult bees to look after all the cells, ensuring they are clean and keeping the larvae and brood warm. They exclusively perform that role for the first few days of their life. They then take time to train the previous set of bees that have just hatched to do the same.
Then, they spend the next three to five days in a completely different role, acting as a nanny to feed the older larvae pollen and honey. Pollen is a protein that is also stored in the hive. The honey reserves are composed of sugar, the carbohydrate that feeds the larvae and helps them grow. They specialise and focus on this second task before ‘retraining again’ to become an expert in a different specialty, such as nursing.
The nursing role is to look after and feed the young worker bees. They then, again, completely change their speciality and spend time training and teaching the previous set of bees who are just younger than them.
Next, the worker bees are trained in a completely different task: to be builders. When they are builders, they use their wax glands to construct the perfect hexagonal six-sided cells, angled precisely at six degrees to the horizontal, so the immature new honey doesn’t drip out. Again, another very specific task.
At this point, the worker bees have still only existed in the darkness, deep inside the hive. Gradually, in these roles, they progress to the outside of the hive, and after serving as a builder, the next role is to be a security guard. They take on a role at the front of the hive for the first time and welcome the new bees returning from their foraging. They also prevent other animals and insects from coming into the hive. If you’ve ever been stung by a bee near a hive, it’ll probably be a security guard who has given up their life to protect the hive. As they die in the process of stinging you, they will also emit a ‘panic pheromone’ so other guard bees are alerted to join the battle against a perceived foe. So, if you get stung once – watch out!
When the guard bees are standing sentry at the front of the hive, they also perform a very specific secondary role: temperature controllers. On the hottest of days, to maintain the humidity and temperature inside the hive, their role is to control ventilation. They plant their six legs firmly on the entrance to the hive and beat their wings, sucking cooler air in and drawing warm, moist air out of the hive, thereby setting up a ventilation circuit. It’s an incredible sight – and noise – to see them beating their wings at full power, working at their maximum limit with their tails pointing down towards the landing board, but not actually flying. It’s essential to recognize that this is a highly specialized skill, distinct from being a builder, a nurse, or a housekeeper.
Their final role
Their final role is to be a forager. By this point, they are stationed out at the entrance to the hive and receiving data from the waggle dance performed by the incoming victorious scout bees. When we marvel at a bee pollinating a beautiful cherry tree or balcony flowers, what we are seeing is a bee at the end of its lifespan, foraging and pollinating for the last two to three days of its life. Be kind to them. It is the end of their life’s work.
Throughout the life of a bee, all individuals perform all the main functions within a hive. In the event of a crisis – such as a damaged hive and the need to rebuild honey cells – worker bees can be reallocated to specific roles at short notice to serve the colony’s needs. The mechanism by which this occurs is not fully understood, but it is a focus of current research. There’s an interesting parallel here for us to consider.
Life is constantly changing, and so will our careers. To avoid getting lost and overwhelmed by these changes, we need to stop and look at the world through two different lenses: a short-term lens and a long-term lens.
The short-term lens requires us to focus on what we are doing right now and ensure we’re good at it. Therefore, we need to invest energy in effective learning and changing our behavior in a sustainable way. Swedish psychologist K. Anders Ericsson, considered to be the ‘expert on experts’, showed there is little evidence that superior performance can be explained by giftedness or inherent talent. It is those who spend time challenging themselves or trying things just beyond their level of expertise and comfort who tend to become experts in their chosen field.
Ericsson’s formula for developing expertise has five elements we can all try. First, learn and experience the task (or lesson). Then, reflect on what needs improving. Third, create objectives for development, and fourth, engage in deliberate practice for reaching those objectives. Finally, reflect on this practice to gather feedback from yourself and others, identifying further areas for development. Repeat steps three to five as needed.
This exercise can be used as a vehicle to practice learning and ensure we are making progress. If you’ve recently been given a new role, give yourself time to settle into the position and try these steps to discover what is required of you, where your strengths lie in this role, and where you could improve.
Career growth doesn’t come from being comfortable in a role. Tom Senninger, a German educator, suggested that the recommended optimal state for learning can be described as being between comfort and panic. This is the zone where learning occurs. So, seek new challenges and try something new – that’s where the most learning happens.
