Honey bee life cycle Honey bee life cycle The honey bee life cycle, here referring exclusively to the domesticated Western honey bee, depends greatly on their social structure. Unlike a bumble bee colony or a paper wasp colony, the life of a honey bee colony is perennial. The three types of honey bees in a hive are: queens (egg-producers), workers (non-reproducing females), and drones (males whose main duty is to find and mate with a queen). Honey bees hatch from eggs in three to four days. They are then fed by worker bees and develop through several stages in the cells. Cells are capped
Western honey bee regurgitates a droplet of warm internal fluid — a "honeycrop droplet" – which reduces the temperature of its head by . Below bees are immobile, and above their activity slows. Honey bees can tolerate temperatures up to for short periods. Honey-bee behavior has been extensively studied, since bees are widespread and familiar. Karl von Frisch, who received the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his study of honey-bee communication, noticed that bees communicate with dance. Through these dances, bees communicate information regarding the distance, the situation, and the direction of a food source by the dances of the