Welcome to the Hive
Get a glimpse inside
All honey bees are not created equal. First, we have the lady herself, the queen. A queen is only fed with royal jelly and hatches 16 days after being laid. But a queen without her kingdom (or, in this case, her hive) is worthless. The queen cannot collect nectar or pollen, and she cannot produce wax. But she is in charge of ensuring that the sperm she collects on her mating flight lasts her entire lifetime of 3 to 5 years. She also decides if she wants to have a boy or a girl. She measures the size of the cell opening with her front legs and lays an unfertilized egg if the opening is large, thus a male drone. If the cell opening is small, she'll add a little sperm, and a female worker bee will later hatch. The power!
The worker bees hatch after 21 days. A hive often contains approximately 60,000 female worker bees. A female begins her short life by cleaning (we're getting to the powerful female part) her honeycomb cell and herself. All cleaned up and ready to go, her next task is to warm up the brood. On days 3 to 5 of her life, she becomes a nurse bee and feeds the older larvae. On days 6 to 12, she starts multi-tasking and feeds the younger larvae, takes nectar from the older female worker bees, packs the pollen, and again must clean. On days 12 to 18, she begins building honeycomb with her wax-secreting glands. We all knew that honey is bee vomit, but did you know that beeswax is bee sweat? She guards the hive on days 17 to 19, allowing only family members to pass. Finally, she is permitted to venture out into the world (as far as approximately 3 kilometers from the hive) and gather nectar. But she's so exhausted that her life ends after just 35 days.
And, of course, we need the boys, otherwise known as drones. The drones cannot sting. They need the longest to hatch, 24 days, and are larger than the female worker bees. A drone's sole function is to find a virgin queen and mate with her. During his lazy lifetime, he is permitted entrance to the hive and is provided with food. To find his virgin queen, a drone has extra large eyes and an enhanced sense of smell. His moment of glory takes place mid-air. He must compete with several other drones for the chance to commit sexual suicide. If he meets with success, the explosive force from the ejaculation of sperm causes him to fall to the ground and die. Meanwhile, the queen continues to mate with another dozen or so drones in the same flight. The drones not "lucky" enough to end their lives so dramatically are then killed off come winter when they are only interested in getting at the precious and limited food supply of the hive. But the working girls simply don't let the boys near the honey anymore, and they die off.
