Regardless of caste, the bee has four distinct stages in its life: egg, larva, pupa, and adult. All eggs hatch after 3 days. When an egg hatches, there is no shell. The outer covering simply softens and is absorbed into the larva. The length of the larva and pupa stage is dependant on the food the larva is fed. While all larvae are fed royal jelly, the worker and drone diet is downgraded after 3 days in quantity and to a lesser quality of food known as bee bread. Royal jelly, which is fed to the queen larvae for the entire larval stage, is a combination of high-protein pollen, high-carbohydrate honey, and enzymes produced by nurse bees. Bee bread is a combination of honey and pollen. Bee bread is also consumed by adult bees.
Regardless of whether the larva is male or female, it molts five times during its larval stage, about every 24 hours during the first 4 days of larval life. While each new larval stage (instar) is at first only slightly larger than the previous one, larvae grow rapidly. Care of the larvae is constant. Each larva receives an estimated 10,000 meals. Larval weight increases by 5 1/2 times during the first day, to 1500 times its hatching weight in six days. For more information on molting: http://maarec.cas.psu.edu/bkCD/HBBiology/life_history.htm
Eggs 'hatch', adult bees 'emerge'. The emergence of adults bees is the 6th molt. Newly emerged bees less than four days old are known as callow bees. They are cleaned and fed by the other bees until their bodies harden and begin to produce substances in various glands.
During her first day as an adult, the queen moves about the hive, finds her sister pupa queens, opens their cells and stings them to death. While she is not treated as a queen until such time she mates, she moves about the hive spreading her pheromones which tells the colony all is well within the hive. Virgin queen bees are ready to mate within a week after emerging. If for some reason she is unable to mate during her first two weeks, she is replaced by the workers. Once mated, the queen turns into a mindless egg laying machine being directed by and totally dependant upon the worker bees. While a queen can live up to 4 or 5 years, she is generally replaced in managed hives every 2 years to maintain maximum egg laying.
The honeybee worker has a lifespan of about six weeks, spending half that time inside the hive, and the other half outside the hive, foraging for nectar and pollen. Workers are house bees for the first three weeks of life. Their various duties include maid, undertaker,nanny, royal attendant, heating/air conditioning specialist,and guard. The worker bee becomes a forager during her fourth week. Foraging is very hard and perilous. If she survives inclement weather and predators, she works herself to death. The majority of foragers die away from the hive, either from wear and tear or exhaustion. While her lifespan is about 45 days during the foraging season, a worker will live 4-5 months during winter. The only jobs during winter besides attending to the queen, are shivering their wing muscles to generate heat and removing any bees that have died in the hive.
If the foraging population is drastically reduced, house bees are forced into the field earlier than normal, disrupting and disorienting the colony. Likwise, if needed, foragers can again take on the duties of house bees, though not as effeciently as younger bees.
While they eventually learn to feed themselves, drones start life as an adult begging for food. When they are two weeks old, drones start taking orientation flights at the hive to learn its location. When weather permits, they take afternoon flights looking for unmated queens. A drone's life span is dependant on two main things, whether he mates with a queen, and the season. A drone dies immediately after mating as his sexual organs and a good portion of his insides are ripped out. If not mated, drones typically live for about 50 days. Come fall, drones are driven from the hive to die either from starvation, predation, or exposure.
