Honey bees belong to a social society that works tirelessly and resourcefully to protect and maintain the hive. They work together and divide the labor between three types of bees.  In mid-winter, the bee colony can have about 7,000 bees, and by late summer those numbers rise to about 70,000.  The colony consists of one queen, several hundred drones, and thousands of worker bees.

The worker bee is female and she gathers the nectar and pollen, feeds the larvae and keeps them warm. She protects all the eggs and makes sure there was a water supply.  The worker bee secrets wax to build the hive. A pupa turns into an adult honey bee in 21 days.  Each individual worker bee will produce about one-half a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime. 

The queen starts out like any other honey bee, except she is fed Royal Jelly.  A new queen can be produced at any time when the larvae is less than 489 hours old by feeding her Royal Jelly.  The queen’s job is to lay thousands of eggs, and she is protected by worker bees who keep her cleaned and fed.

The drone is the male honey bee.  His only function is to mate with the queen.  He does not do any work.  Males are pushed out of the colony as winter approaches. They do not survive.