Honey bees live in colonies of 20,000 to 80,000 individuals, organized around a single laying queen, thousands of female workers, and a few hundred male drones. Everything the colony does — building comb, raising brood, storing honey, and pollinating flowers — depends on this division of labor.
Inside the colony
Each colony runs on strict roles. The queen lays up to 2,000 eggs a day at peak season. Workers, all female, move through jobs as they age: cleaning cells, feeding larvae, building comb from wax, guarding the entrance, and finally foraging for nectar and pollen. The hive is a single superorganism where no worker acts for itself.
The three castes
Drones are the only males, produced in spring and summer, and their sole job is to mate with a virgin queen. Workers live about six weeks in summer, while a queen can survive several years. When a queen ages or dies, workers rear a replacement by feeding a larva royal jelly, which triggers full ovary development.
Pollination work
Foraging bees visit dozens of flowers per trip, transferring pollen as they collect nectar. This pollination is what makes honey bees essential to orchards, berries, and vegetable crops. A single strong colony can work a large orchard over a few weeks, moving from blossom to blossom as each variety blooms.
Honey and communication
Bees store surplus nectar as honey, ripening it by fanning their wings to drive moisture below 18 percent, which prevents fermentation. Foragers tell nestmates where flowers are with the waggle dance, a figure-eight movement that encodes direction and distance relative to the sun. The better the forage, the more vigorous the dance.
