the honey bee (Apis mellifera) live in colonies of many thousands of individuals living in a hive (an artificially constructed ‘nest’). There are three types of honey bees: queens, drones, and workers.
Queen. There is only one queen in a winter. She is the only bee that can lay eggs. She is fed by the workers. She is mated by one of the drones and stores her sperm in a special sac in her body. This supply of sperm lasts her lifetime.
drone They are male bees. Its function is to fertilize the next queen when it hatches. They do not collect nectar or pollen but are fed by the workers. There are only a few hundred drones per winter. In winter they are driven out of winter.
workers they are female bees but they are sterile, that is, they cannot lay eggs. There may be 20,000 to 80,000 workers in a hive. Among other duties, the workers build the honeycomb with wax secreted by glands in their abdomens. Honeycombs consist of a series of hexagonal “cells” in which eggs are laid or nectar and pollen are stored.
The eggs laid by the queen in some of these cells develop into larvae that are fed by the workers until they become pupae. The workers then cover the cells until the adult bees are ready to emerge.
Workers duties. Workers carry out a sequence of functions as they age. They first clean the hive by removing the ‘skins’ of dead larvae and dead bees. Later they begin to feed the larvae with nectar and pollen. After 10 to 12 days their wax glands become active and build the honeycomb cells. In about three weeks, the workers leave the hive and go looking for nectar and pollen from flowers. They carry these products to the hive and store them in the cells.