Life Cycle of a Honeybee

My recent visit to our province of Bohol Island (The Philippines) turned out to be an unexpected informative experience when I decided to visit The Bohol Bee Farm. The farm, which produces its own brand of delectable pure honey and other organic products, have well-informed and engaging staff that revealed some interesting facts regarding the life cycle of the honeybee.

There are three types of honeybees; the queen, workers and drones. An ordinary colony has around 60,000 bees with only one queen. The queen lays the eggs that produce all the other bees. Within her 5 to 6 year lifetime she would have laid as many as 3000 eggs a day (per season) and mated at least 17 times. What is interesting however, is the fact that all the worker bees that do the hard labor in the entire colony are female. Within their short lived life (up to 45 days!) they cycle through a series of different tasks until they ultimately die.

First they are “nurse bees” that feed the larvae emerging from the eggs. These worker bees are also responsible for feeding the queen. They produce “royal jelly” in their bodies which is secreted on top of their head. This is the only food that the queen and larvae will eat. Then they become “janitor bees” in charge with all the cleaning. They keep the “honeycomb chambers” clean because the queen will not lay an egg in a dirty chamber. They also dispose of the sick and dead bees by tossing them out before they infect other bees. Then they become “guard bees” in charge of protecting and defending the colony. They will not let bees inside the hive returning without any nectar.