The Three Types of Bees in Your Hive

The queen is the only sexually developed female in the colony. Her primary job is simple but critical: lay eggs. A productive queen can lay 1,500-2,000 eggs per day during peak season—more than her own body weight in eggs.

The Queen's Life Cycle

Queens develop from fertilized eggs—the same as workers. The difference is diet: larvae destined to become queens are fed royal jelly exclusively, while worker larvae switch to honey and pollen after three days.

A new queen's development takes about 16 days from egg to emergence. Shortly after emerging, she takes one or more mating flights, during which she mates with 12-20 drones in mid-air. She stores enough sperm to fertilize millions of eggs for her entire life—she'll never mate again.

When Things Go Wrong

A failing queen shows spotty laying patterns, fewer eggs, or increased drone laying (unfertilized eggs). Colonies may supersede (replace) a failing queen by raising a new one, or beekeepers may intervene by requeening.

Workers are sterile females that do literally everything else in the colony. They're the bees you see on flowers, the bees that sting when threatened, and the bees that make honey. A strong colony may have 40,000-60,000 workers at peak summer population.

Jobs by Age (Temporal Polyethism)

Workers change jobs as they age, with different glands and abilities developing over their short lives:

This schedule is flexible—colonies can accelerate or delay transitions based on need. If foragers are killed (pesticides, predators), younger bees age into the role faster.

Worker Lifespan

Summer workers live only 5-7 weeks. They literally work themselves to death—foraging wears out their wings and bodies.

Winter workers can live 4-6 months. Born in fall, they cluster to keep the queen warm all winter, eating stored honey until spring. Different physiology, same basic genetics.

Drones are male bees with one job: mate with virgin queens. They don't forage, don't make wax, don't feed larvae, and can't sting. From a colony resources perspective, they're an investment in reproduction rather than day-to-day operations.

The Drone's Life

Drones develop from unfertilized eggs (they have only one set of chromosomes—from their mother). Development takes 24 days, longer than workers or queens.

Sexually mature drones fly to "drone congregation areas"—specific locations, often used year after year, where drones from many colonies gather to wait for virgin queens. When a queen flies through, drones compete to mate. Successful mating is fatal for the drone—his reproductive organs tear away during the process.

Drones who don't mate? They return to the hive, eat honey, and try again another day. It's not a bad life—until fall.

The Superorganism

A honeybee colony functions as a single entity greater than its parts. No individual bee can survive alone for long—they need the collective warmth, food storage, and division of labor that the colony provides.

Think of it this way:

• The queen is like the reproductive system—producing the next generation
• The workers are like all other organs—doing everything needed to survive
• The drones are like sperm cells—existing to spread genetics to other colonies

When you manage a hive, you're not managing 50,000 individual bees—you're managing one superorganism with 50,000 moving parts. Understanding what each part does helps you read what the colony needs.