Blog

The life cycle of the bee, referred to here, is exclusively the domesticated bee, which depends largely on its social structure. Unlike a colony of bumblebees or a colony of wasps, the life of a colony of bees is perennial. There are two queen bee breeds, which produce eggs, and worker bees, which are all non-breeding females.

For drones (males) their only duty is to find and mate with a queen. The queen lays the eggs individually in the cells of the honeycomb and the larvae leaves the eggs in there for three or four days. Queens are then fed by worker bees and they develop through various stages in the cells. Queens and drones are larger than worker bees and therefore require larger cells to develop.

A typical colony may consist of tens of thousands of individuals. Although some colonies live in hives provided by humans, so-called “wild” colonies (although all honey bees remain wild, even when grown and managed by humans). They usually prefer a clean site and a dry nest, protected from the weather, over the 20 liters of volume with an entrance of about 9 feet above the ground, and preferably facing south or southeast (in the northern hemisphere) or north or northeast (in The southern hemisphere).