The three bees of a honey bee colony

The queen
One bee to rule them all. The one queen bee of a hive is the center point and the only fertile female bee in a colony. All life within the colony revolves around her, the eggs she lays, and the pheromone (known as the Queen Substance) she releases to reassure and regulate the activities of the 30,000 to 60,000 bees she reigns over.​​ She is recognisable in the hive because of her elongated body that extends well beyond her folded wings.
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She lays around 2000 to 3000 eggs per day in the peak of each season for her 3 or 4 year lifespan. Each individual egg is laid in a cleaned and polished honeycomb cell that is built and prepared by the worker bees. She can hold 3 to 4 million sperm that is provided by male drone bees during mating flights in the early Spring (see below).
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The worker
Worker bees make up 85 to 90% of the population of the colony and are all infertile females. Depending on their age, they perform the functioning tasks needed by the colony such as the building honeycomb through secreting wax, feeding and serving the queen, feeding and nurturing the young bees, processing and storing the nectar and pollen brought in by the foraging workers, guarding the colony and, as they become the eldest bees in the colony, going out to forage for flower nectar and pollen.
In the Spring and Summer seasons, they only have a lifespan of around 6 weeks because of the incredible hard work they go through, while in the winter season they can live around 5 months. This dramatic difference in lifespan is because honey bees will literally work themselves to death, as they put the entire colony’s needs above their own at all times.
The drone
The drones are the only male bees of the colony. They are fertile, and at one point in the season can form 10 to 15% of the population. Their primary role is to inseminate the queen during her Spring mating flights. An action that will kill them as soon as it's performed. They are recognisable in the hive because they have a much broader body than a worker bee, and large wrap-around eyes.
Another fascinating function they perform is to help regulate the internal temperature of the hive as the breeding areas of the hive require a stable temperature of 33 to 36’C. Bees will rapidly flap their wings to circulate air, and worker bees have been known to herd drones to locations in the hive for them to perform this function.
If they don't have the opportunity to mate with a queen, they can live to around 2 months, and will then be evicted from the colony by the workers in the Autumn to prevent them from using the Winter stores. They will be pushed out of the hive, and the guards will not let them reenter. As a result, they are left to starve to death.
The lifecycle of a honey bee

After the queen lays an egg, the length of the process before emergence of an adult bee varies according to which of the 3 types of bee will be born.
When the colony requires workers, the queen will lay fertilized eggs, and the transformation from egg, to larva, to pupa and emerging adult will take 21 days. If the colony requires male drones, the queen will lay unfertilized eggs and the same process will take 24 days. If the colony requires a new queen, the workers will feed chosen worker larva a specialist diet (see below) which will transform her into a fertile female (a queen) in 16 days from egg to emerging adult.
Any egg will hatch in 3 days into a larva, and is bathed in food every 15 minutes by workers who perform the function of nurse bees, after another 5 days of feeding the cell is sealed with breathable beeswax by the nurse bees, and the larva will begin to spin a cocoon for its pupa stage. From this point the duration will vary according to which bee will emerge. In the pupa stage, the wings, legs, eyes and all the other necessary bee bits will be formed in order for the emerging bee to chew its way out of the capped cell to emerge as a glorious adult bee.
How to raise a queen
In general, the workers who are designated as nurse bees at a particular age will feed Royal Jelly to a new larva for 3 days before changing the diet to bee bread, which is a mix of stored honey and pollen.
This Royal Jelly is produced by the nurse bees through a gland on their bodies that matures to function at a certain age. However, if the colony’s workers detect a change in the reigning queen’s pheromones that shows she’s tired, sick, injured or has left the colony, the workers will continue feeding Royal Jelly to a chosen worker larva. Once emerged, this queen will reign over the colony, and the old Queen (if she hasn’t already left or died) will be killed.
It is our collective and individual responsibility to to preserve and tend to the environment in which we all live.
~
His Holiness XIV Dalai Lama