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
Honey bee where little of substance can be said about the exact relationships of many "A. mellifera" subspecies. "Apis mellifera" is not native to the Americas, so was not present upon the arrival of the European explorers and colonists. However, other native bee species were kept and traded by indigenous peoples. In 1622, European colonists brought the dark bee ("A. m. mellifera") to the Americas, followed later by Italian bees ("A. m. ligustica") and others. Many of the crops that depend on honey bees for pollination have also been imported since colonial times. Escaped swarms (known as "wild" bees, but actually feral)