The purpose of this post is to provide a basic understanding of the different kinds of bees that make up a colony, their role with respect to the rest of the colony, and how the colony’s tasks and behaviors change through the various seasons. Once a beekeeper has an understanding of this information, it becomes much easier to assess the colony’s health, to problem-solve issues affecting a bee colony, and to be proactive with regard to tasks that will help a colony survive and thrive.

Queens, Workers and Drones.

A bee colony is comprised of a queen, workers, and drones. The queen is the only female bee in the colony with a fully developed reproductive system. Her sole purpose is to lays eggs to replenish the colony’s population. Workers are female bees who perform all other tasks related to the colony’s survival. Drones are male bees and exist only to mate with queens from other colonies.

Egg to Emergence

The table below shows the development of a queen, a worker, and a drone, from the day the egg is laid until the bee emerges as an adult. Approximately six days after the bee hatches out of an egg, the workers will cap its cell with wax. After the cell is capped, the larva will enter the pupal stage. It will spin a cocoon and enter a state of metamorphosis (like a butterfly). During this transformation, it will change from a grub-like appearance and develop all the physical characteristics of the adult bee.

	Egg	Larva	Pupa	Emerges as an Adult
Queen	3	6	7	16
Worker	3	6	12	21
Drone	3	6	15	24

Queens

The queen is fed during the first 3 days of being a larva in a way that promotes the full development of her reproductive system. For the following three days she is fed in a manner that also encourages her to fully develop in size. The cell in which a queen develops is longer than any other cell in order to accommodate her very elongated abdomen. It is a long, cone-shaped cell.

The colony has a single queen laying eggs within the colony. A new queen is created by the colony either because the colony is currently without a queen, the colony is going to swarm (i.e., the hive is overcrowded and the old queen will leave with about half the colony to find a new home), or there is something wrong with the existing queen and the workers have decided to replace her with a new queen. In some of these circumstances, the workers will raise several queens. Because the hive dynamics only allow for one queen, the first queen to hatch out will seek out the cells of each unhatched queen, tear a hole in the cell wall, and sting her to death.

After emerging, the new queen will walk around the comb for approximately 4 days while the exoskeleton in her thorax hardens, allowing her full use of her wings. She will take a mating flight. During the mating flight she flies to an area where drones have congregated for purposes of mating with available virgin queens. This is known as a Drone Congregation Area (DCA). The queen will mate with 15-20 drones, then, return to the hive. Once she returns, she will begin laying eggs. Egg laying can happen within several hours of returning or may not happen for several weeks. Once she begins laying, the pheromone she produces will become stronger. This pheromone is spread through the hive by her movements around the hive. The presence of the pheromone stimulates the workers to do their routine tasks. If the queen’s pheromone is weak or not present, the workers are triggered to begin raising a new queen out of any egg that is 1-6 days old.

The queen can lay up to 1,500 eggs per day. The average is about 900. If she lays a fertilized egg, it will develop into a female bee. If she lays an unfertilized egg, it will become a drone. She walks the comb and measures cells with her front legs. She lays an unfertilized egg in the cell if it is a large cell (drone cell) and lays a fertilized egg if it is a standard sized cell or a queen cell.

Drones

Drones provide no direct benefit to the colony. They exist merely to transfer the genetics of its colony to the queens of other colonies and, in doing so, further the survival of the species.

After emerging, drones stay in the hive for approximately 14 days while they become sexually mature. During this time, they are fed by the workers. Once they leave the hive, they will fly to a DCA and attempt to mate. If they are successful, the act of reproduction results in their immediate death. If they are unsuccessful, they return to the hive, are fed, and return to the DCA. They will repeat this cycle until they mate or die of old age.

In the end of July, the colony will slow down its drone production. In August drone production will stop. In September, the workers will quit feeding drones and will begin expelling them from the hive by dragging them out of the hive and keeping them from coming back inside. The drones eventually die of starvation. This is done because the colony is preserving all of its honey to assist the workers and queen to survive the winter. Because the drones provide no benefit to the hive during the winter, they are sacrificed.

Workers

Workers perform different tasks throughout their lifetime. The role they perform is largely dictated by the physiological changes they go through. The table below sets forth these changes with the days since emerging listed across the top and the duties they perform set forth below the corresponding age range.

1-2	3-5	6-11	12-17	18-21	22-45
clean cells	feed older larvae	feed younger larvae	build comb	guard hive entrance	forage or scout
warm brood	attend to queen	cap cells	place food within the comb
			regulate hive temp.

For the first 2 days after emerging, workers clean the cocoons and other debris out of the cells and prepare them for the queen to lay in. From day 3-5, their hypopharyngeal gland becomes active and they begin feeding older larvae excretions from this gland, as well as attend to the queen. The hypopharyngeal gland is most productive from day 6-11 and they begin feeding young larvae. At this point their wax glands also begin to thicken and they start using wax to cap cells. From day 12-17, their wax glands are at their peak production capability. As a result, the worker transitions to building comb. Because their feeding-related glands are becoming passive, they also begin the task of taking resources from incoming foragers and placing them in appropriate locations around the inside of the hive. They also take over the task of regulating the temperature in the hive by shivering to create heat or fanning the comb after water has been placed on it to create evaporation of the water which, in turn, cools the hive. On day 18-21, the workers wax glands begin to slow production and their stinger venom is at its most potent level. At this time, they begin acting as guard bees. Because they have been inside the hive for approximately 3 weeks, they are familiar with the smell of the hives and, consequently, the smell of the bees that reside there. They are able to detect bees from other colonies based on smell and take action to keep them out of the hive. After 21 days, the bees begin taking orientation flights and, eventually, become foragers. They will perform foraging until they die of old age. If they leave the hive with a swarm, the foragers are the members of the swarm that scout the nearby area for a suitable new home. Worker bees will live for 42 to 60 days during the Spring and Summer. Workers that emerge in October live through the winter and begin foraging in March or April, depending on the ambient temperatures.