Honey Bees
The Three Types of Honey Bees in your Hive
- Female
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Only one per hive
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Queen cells look like a large peanut built horizontally to the face of the comb.
Total of 16 days from egg to adult.
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Can live 3-4 years
- The queen's job is to lay eggs, up to 1,500 per day! Shortly after a new queen is born, she leaves the nest for mating flights. The virgin queen mates with drones from other hives and accumulates enough spermatozoa to last the rest of her laying lifetime.
- The queen is larger than a worker and narrow with a long, pointed abdomen. She will often have a circle of worker bees around her.
- Female
- ~20,000 to 60,000 per hive, depending on the time of year
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Brood caps are beige/tan, smooth and almost level with the comb surface.
Total of 21 days from egg to adult.
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Can live 1-6 months
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The jobs of a worker bee varies throughout her life, but can include foraging, carrying water, fanning the hive to cool it, building honeycomb, packing pollen, propolizing, sealing honey, feeding brood, feeding drones, attending to the queen, and guarding the hive.
- Workers are smaller than queens and drones.
- Male
- ~300 per hive, but often kicked out before winter
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Drone brood cells are larger with caps that protrude from the surface comb in a "bullet" shape. Usually at the edges of the brood nest.
Total of 24 days from egg to adult. - Can live 6 weeks to 6 months. If he happens to mate, he will die shortly afterwards.
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A drone's only job is to mate with a virgin queen from a different hive. This occurs in drone congregation areas 30-120 feet in the air. The same areas are used year to year. It's not understood how new drones find these areas.
- Drones have huge eyes with no gap between them. They also have a larger body size compared to workers and no stinger.
Honey Bee Development
Egg
After worker bees build wax cells in the lower portions of the hive, the queen lays one egg into each cell. It looks like a little white dot or line. Fertilized eggs become females and unfertilized eggs become males.
This stage lasts 3 days.
Larva
The tiny egg then hatches into a larva and feed on royal jelly. Larvae destined to become workers and drones are switched to a pollen and honey mixture. Future queens remain on a diet of royal jelly.
The larval stage lasts 5.5 days for a queen, 6 days for workers, and 6.5 days for drones.
Pupa
Larvae are then capped shut in their cells to pupate.
The pupal stage lasts 7.5 days for a queen, 12 days for workers, and 14.5 days for drones.
Adult
After pupation, the adult bee chews its way through the capping on its cell and emerges.
All in all, from egg to adult, it takes a queen a total of 16 days to emerge, a worker 21 days, and a drone 24 days.