The Worker Bee

The Worker Bees do all the work of the colony. They are unfertilized females, which means that they cannot lay eggs. Worker Bees work hard until they die, starting soon after they emerge from the cell. She begins her adult life by cleaning the cell she emerged from. A Worker Bee performs a variety of jobs during her short life. She warms the brood, then nurses the larvae and pupae and then moves on to receiving collected pollen and nectar which she packs into the food cells. Worker Bees clean and build the hive, before learning about the hive location. Then they take on guard duty and finally go out collecting pollen and nectar. The Workers however, have control over how many eggs the queen lays and whether a new queen is produced.

The Queen Bee

The Queen Bee is different right from the word go. The queen cells are large and hung irregularly from the edges of the comb. She is fed solely on ‘royal jelly’ during the larvae stage and is longer and larger than a worker bee with a tapered abdomen. Her sting is curved without barbs and only used against other queens. She has no pollen baskets and no wax-making pockets as these are not needed to lay eggs. Her wings are short as normally she only flies on mating flights or when accompanying the swarm. There is usually only one queen at a time. She is fed and groomed by attendant worker bees who also prepare the cells for her eggs. She is the only bee in the hive to lay eggs: fertilized eggs, in the smaller cells are female and become workers; and unfertilized eggs in the larger cells are the male drones. And lay eggs she does! At the height of the season, the Queen can lay up to 2000 eggs a day. A Queen Bee can live up to four or five years and often lays a total of 100,000 to 200,000 eggs each year.

The Drone Bee

The Drone Bee has only one job – to mate with and fertilize the young Queen. Drones can leave the home hive at anytime and are readily accepted at other hives. The Drone Bee that successfully mates with the Queen, during any of her mating flights, is killed afterwards. While in the hive, Drone Bees are fed honey by Worker Bees only when honey is plentiful. If there is a shortage of nectar with the cold or dry weather, they are often left to starve and are removed from the hive. At most drone bees live about 5 months.