The Life Cycle of Honey Bees

Regardless of caste, the bee has four distinct stages in its life: egg,larva, pupa,and adult. All eggs hatch after 3 days. 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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.   Once mated, the queen turns into a mindless egg laying machine being directed by and totally dependant upon the worker bees.   If for some reason she is unable to mate during her first two weeks, she is replaced by the workers.  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.

Workers are house bees for the first three weeks of life.  Their various duties include maid, undertaker,nanny, royal attendant, 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.  Her total 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 fanning to keep the hive warm and undertaker to remove any bees that have died in the hive.

Drones start life as an adult begging for food.  They eventually learn to feed themselves.  When they are two weeks old, they start taking orientation flights at the hive to learn its location.   When weather permits, they take afternoon fights looking for unmated queens.   A drone's lifespan 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 are ripped out.  Come fall, drones are driven from the hive to die either from starvation, predation, or exposure.